Let Down by God - Dashed Hopes

This post will not involve any more babbling on about snakes.


How's that title for provocative?

I read of an incident a couple weeks ago in the book of I Samuel (that's in the Bible) that brought to mind the idea of God failing to come through.

You know, we Christians often count on the Lord as some spiritual cavalry Who always rides in at the last moment with the clarion call of the bugle and saves the day (watch the one of the later scenes of the movie "Stagecoach" for an illustration of this point).

So what happens when He doesn't ride in? How do we react when the "Hail Mary" pass falls short, clock runs out and the game is lost?

That is one of those possibilities that we Christians may think we shouldn't talk about- the possibility that God won't answer our prayer or at least that He won't answer as we think He should.

Do you remember me lamenting on the book of Judges in the Old Testament and how it was just a picture of the nation of Israel spiraling down? Well in the early part of I Samuel we see the result of that downward spiral: a void of sound, godly leadership and corruption and abuse from those the people looked to for help.

It all came to a climax.

The climax began with a tender voice calling in the night to a small boy... "Samuel, Samuel!"

If you went to Sunday School as a child, you heard that story.

Samuel listened to his mentor, the old man - Eli, and followed his instruction when the Voice called again.

"Speak Lord, I'm listening..."

And God foretold the peril that would strike the nation and the corrupt household of the old priest, Eli.

It all happened.

A battle erupted and the Israelites were losing so they decided to bring the Ark of the Covenant - the representation of God's presence on earth - into the battle.

I'm sure they mistook symbolism for substance and remembered tales of times that "God came into the camp and turned the battle". So they figured the Ark would do the trick.

God is not into parlor tricks.

The Philistines -perennial nemesis to the nation of Israel - thought the same thing as the Israelites; when word came to them that the Ark was in the camp, they were sure their proverbial geese were cooked. Their leaders essentially told them to "man-up" and go down fighting.

Well they all thought wrong. Because this time, God didn't come through.

To add insult to injury, the entire household of the old priest, Eli all died. . . including Eli.
As his daughter-in-law went into labor and died in childbirth, she cursed the infant with the name - Ichabod . That means - the glory of the Lord has departed.

Worst of all, the Ark was stolen. The Glory truly had departed.

Surely they thought that their last link to God had slipped through their fingers and they couldn't get God back.

The only description I can give for how I think they felt is that feeling of being kicked in the stomach.

Their hopes were dashed.

I hope to say more about that later.