Being Different

In today’s reading the Israelites insist that Samuel appoint them a king. Samuel goes on to tell them what will happen if they are appointed a king. The king will take their belongings; their land, crops, livestock and money. Their sons will be required to do hard labor and be sent into battle. Their daughters will be required to do labor as well and then they will complain against this king that they wanted so desperately. But they don’t care; they refuse to listen to Samuel.  They don’t want to be different; they want to have what all the other nations have, a king.  God tells Samuel that they are not rejecting him but rejecting God as their King and to grant their every request. Why does God tell Samuel to do this when he knew that this was not what was best for them? It was because their hearts were stony and they would not be persuaded. God only wants what is best for us but sometimes allows things to happen, because we insist on doing things our way, even if it ends in disaster.  How many times have we tried to warn someone about something but they refuse to listen and then later, we may not say it, but we are thinking, I tried to tell you. Sometimes we have to learn things the hard way.

What God was asking of the Israelites was radical. Every other nation had a king. Even though life could be hard for the people, especially if the king was corrupt and didn’t take care of those that were in his care, it was familiar. God wanted to be their king; this invisible God who demanded that they have no other gods. It was commonplace for the people to have many gods. The concept of monotheism was unheard of. They were learning what it meant to have a covenantal relationship with God but when things get hard we revert back to our old ways. It is hard being different. It is much more comfortable to go along with the crowd. It takes less effort and you don’t get grief for wanting to be different. When I was 11 years old my brother died. It made us different. People no longer knew what to say around us. In our society we like to avoid things that make us uncomfortable so we stay away from those who are mourning or are dying. We avoid the homeless man on the corner or turn away when see an injustice. We somehow think it will keep it from happening to us. And for my family, our relationship with God had changed. Like the Israelites, we were being called to accept this radical change and to trust in Him. He was asking us to believe that he would carry us through this and that something good could result from this tragedy. We were forever changed. Our priorities changed, things that we once thought were important, no longer were. Our faith took on a whole new meaning and our trust in God deepened. We were different and we had to learn to embrace it.