Senior Pastor Laura Truax has been on the pastoral staff for 7 years; she became senior pastor in 2004. Rev. Truax has a Master’s of Arts in Pastoral Studies with an emphasis in Spirituality and a Master’s of Divinity from Loyola University. Rev. Truax is a teaching pastor at the University of Chicago.Wake up and smell the coffee
I continue to get comments and emails about a sermon from a few weeks ago: The Power of Change. I was looking at that poignant passage in 1 Samuel 16, where the prophet, distraught and discouraged over the outrageous actions of King Saul sought to escape from the fray by returning to his family home in Ramah.
Samuel has already given Saul the message that Yahweh has rejected him as king over Israel, but at this point no body else knows. Just the three of them. But Samuel just keeps holding on to the past. He doesn’t want to let the dream go – the dream of what might have been is still the most vivid thing he has.
“How long will you grieve over Saul?” Yahweh asks. What a cut-to-the-chase question! How long will you continue to pine away from this window at your suburban house in Ramah? How long will you continue to fail to see the obvious? I have rejected him from being king over Israel.
Then without a pause, “Now get up, fill your horn with oil. I am sending you to Jesse in Bethlehem…I have found a king.”
It’s gotten me thinking about what I miss when I simply keep holding on to something from a past that clearly has no future. Samuel could have missed what God was doing, missed this new king God was preparing for “such a time as this.” He could have missed it by staring out the window, sad and discouraged. What are we missing I wonder?
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