But be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you. Yet if you persist in doing evil, both you and your king will perish.
1 Samuel 12:24-25 (NIV)
Both Sentences, Said to a Nation
The back section of the cemetery stops getting mowed sometime in November, and by the end of the month the flat markers go under the wet grass. Two sisters are on their knees in it, sweeping their hands out in slow arcs, because neither of them paid attention to the rows on the way in. The younger one finds an edge and says she has it, and the name on it belongs to a stranger. Then the older one stops moving.
You have done all this evil, Samuel tells the crowd, and he tells them to serve the Lord with all their heart anyway. He warns them off useless idols that can’t rescue anybody. God will not reject his people, he says, for the sake of his own great name. And he promises to keep praying for them and to teach them the way that is good and right.
The charge comes with a warning fastened to it. But be sure to fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with all your heart; consider what great things he has done for you. Yet if you persist in doing evil, both you and your king will perish.
That second sentence goes to a people and their king together, both of them named in it. Samuel leaves it standing as a condition and never says who carries it out. Persist in doing evil, and you will perish, the king along with you.
Standing under both at once is harder than standing under either one. The promise that the Lord will not reject his people for the sake of his great name comes out of the same mouth in the same hour as the warning, and Samuel softens neither.
The charge asks for one ordinary piece of work. Consider what great things he has done for you. These are people just told they did all this evil, and the work Samuel gives them is to look back over what God did and take it in slowly.
The older sister has a year behind her she wouldn’t walk through twice. Somewhere inside it is the friend who drove four hours and hardly said a word, and the neighbor who mowed this whole section in July and said nothing about it afterward.
Her sister puts both palms flat on the grass and starts working them outward from her knees.
A Prayer to Remember
It gets dark before dinner and I keep going back over a year I can’t fix, and most of what I find is my own part in it. Don’t leave me there. Walk me back through the same months and show me what you did. Start with the stretch I skip every time.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
