Samson - Thoughts from 2007

I had spent many years visiting children in orphanages in Haiti. By now I was not a stranger to being caught off guard by what I may find on my visits.
On this day, I was standing before a child whose body had never had the ability to move at his command. He labored hoping that his sounds would eventually make a word that I would understand. But, not to worry if I didn’t, he would continue drawing me in and pulling me closer. I was always aware of feeling the physical struggle with in my own body as he labored to share with me what he was thinking. Over the years I had gotten better at understanding him, I was no longer uncomfortable spending time with this broken child. I would look for him on each visit finding him in his chair bouncing with a joy he could not control, a freedom I don't understand. He owned joy unspeakable and it knew him well consuming his whole face. Now, he would have to try to control the joy that consumed him while trying to say something.
Suddenly his arms could jerk and his head would fall back, he was struggling to pull his words from a door that seemed to be locked. Finally he managed to unlock the door and find words that would alter my life. Words that brought me instantly to a place I had never known to exist. I was instantly standing alone while surrounded by ninety children.
With hot tears on my cheeks, I pulled myself back from this place trying to process his words…I love you, Sheila.
Stunned, I remember gasping for air, speechless.
I hadn’t seen him for months, how on earth did he remember my name.
How could he?
His body was so broken?
I couldn’t speak.
I had collided with a time and place that I didn’t know existed with a child that for all purposes had no value.
Not in America, not in Haiti.
But he mattered to Jesus, just as all the other children matter to him. There was no difference between us. At that place and time I knew instantly that the love of Jesus had no boundaries.

As I lay in bed that evening I cried myself to sleep. How did this child know my name? It was so pure. I was ruined. I returned home not telling many people of the place this broken child had taken me. How hard it is to explain these things. How could I put into words the deep work the Lord had done in me in that moment.

This morning was no different than any other. I was back home, settled in, several months after my trip. I had gotten the kids off to school and had sat down with a cup of coffee to do my morning devotions, studying the book of Judges. I had come across the time and place of Samson’s birth. His parents had a collision of sorts. An angel of the Lord had come and told his mother about a child they would have. His father not believing asked for the Lord to come back and give a confirmation to them. He would be a Nasserite, set apart and different from the other children. His name means sunlight, to be brilliant.

Ofcourse his name was Samson. I am not talking about the man who was to bring freedom to the children of Israel by using his physical strength as a weapon. I am talking about the boy I left in Haiti who had all but been forgotten by the world. What else could his name have been?

All of a sudden, just as before, it all came crashing together hitting me again, catching me off guard. This child, Samson, the Lord used him to speak to me that he loved me in such a pure way. This child was a source of brilliant sunlight.
My emotions overwhelmed me and I began to cry again. This time it was a confirmation of the greatness and mystery of the Lord Jesus. The creator of the universe could take three words like, I love you, from a broken child and change me so deeply. It was just like Jesus to mend years of never understanding His love with the life of a boy that no one would choose, not in the broken body of a child.

It is an amazing truth that the Lord will use the unlovable and the things man rejects to bring His kingdom to earth. But, it is often not what you are looking for that often stops you in your tracks and leads you to a place that you had not known to exist, but it is in these places you will find Jesus waiting for you.