First Sunday in October

I Samuel 28:3-6


It's frightening to come to a point or place in life and find that you have no idea where to go next. Take Saul, for example. He stands today without counsel and without a clue what to do. It feels, whether true or not, that he has wandered so far from the expected path of his life that he is even beyond God's reach.


I'm reading some of my own life into the text when I say that Saul could be seen as someone to whom things happened, and he was simply swept along with the tide. Did he want to be a leader of this magnitude? We're not told explicitly either way. But that is what came to him, a wind that got beneath him and blew him like a falling autumn leaf. And, it seems, upon reaching this moment in life the wind stopped, leaving him with the decision about what to do next.


Living in the country these past few months, I've become reacquainted with how dark the night truly is. Attempting to maneuver the long driveway down to the mailbox after sunset without a flashlight is a little scary. There are curves in the drive that, if not followed, will lead into the grass and perhaps cause my feet to become tangled in fallen limbs, or, worse, I might run into one of the many trees out here. And this goes without mentioning the fact that in this darkness someone could be ahead of me and I'd never know it until I was face to face with them.


Sadly, this renewed experience of night has coincided with a time in my life much like Saul's—a period where I have no idea what direction to take on the road ahead. Like Saul, I find that all the means at my disposal are no help in showing a way forward. And God who once gave counsel, does not now even whisper. I am afraid.


This month, I'm hoping to offer, in this month of scary movies and spooky things, meditations on fear. However, as I work to write this first week, I find that am lacking on wise counsel. Fear about tomorrow, about the path that seems so dark ahead of me, paralyzes me in the same way that Saul himself stood paralyzed on the hilltop. And while the angels counsel not to fear, I find that I cannot easily escape its grasp.


But I try and hold on to the knowledge gained in better times that fear clouds my mind and tampers with my thoughts in order to feed itself. The country darkness, I must remember, is often only deep until I stand still and allow my eyes to adjust. And that scary silence that Saul, and I, often fear is an absence may be, may just be, a space that is quiet enough for me to hear.


You who is without fear, help me as I stare into the darkness that is the future and help me, in the silence, to hear you saying "fear not it is I."