The most exciting, scary, and infuriating thing about life with God is that we never know when or how God’s Spirit is going to move.

It’s exciting because any day, at any moment, it is a possibility that God will move mightily. It could be today!

It’s scary, because when God moves, God doesn’t always do exactly what I think is the right thing to do.

It’s infuriating, because there are so many times we NEED God to move, so many things wrong in our lives and in our world that we desperately want God to fix; but we must wait for God to do things in God’s time.

Our journey through Lent is a good reminder to us that our timing is not God’s timing. Have you been preparing for Easter? We said we were going to give up something, dig in to the bible, and look deep into our own lives in these weeks before Easter.

I’m really missing the things I’ve given up, and at times catch myself wanting the waiting of Lent to be over. As I’ve dug in to the bible, I’ve seen how Jesus resolutely chose to go to Jerusalem, knowing what was coming, grieving for himself and for the rebellious people. As I’ve looked deep, God has brought up things I’ve had to make right. I’ve had to ask forgiveness, and I’ve had to change.

God’s change in my life doesn’t happen on my timetable.

But again this week, I’ve had a tangible reminder that God is so alive, so at work. I see myself being changed by God’s Spirit, and that gives me great hope.

Listen to Ephesians 5, where Paul talks about us as darkness and light. Listen for the excitement, the scariness, and the infuriating way we both battle and live into the light God is bringing into our lives. [READ Eph. 5:8-14]

The light will make everything visible, will wake even the dead. There is absolutely no doubt that we are going to see God’s light in our lives and in our world. But we’ll have to keep battling the darkness. We’ll have to keep working to find out what pleases the Lord.

God’s power is at work in the world. He is not finished with us or the world yet. Things are not yet fully in the light, fully exposed, fully shined upon by Christ…but God’s Spirit IS at work, and you and I can walk in the light and power of God’s Spirit.

One of the biggest problems is the world we see doesn’t always match this nice, clean metaphor of light and dark.

You and I both know that if you walk out into the darkness with a flashlight and flick it on, the darkness doesn’t overcome the light, or make it cloudy, or block it. The light wins instantly, every time.

Paul is reminding us of what is true, that nothing really can stop God. But the fact that we need to be reminded of it is the very thing that indicates darkness has a way of clinging to us and clouding our sight. That’s the picture I can’t help but see when I look at the life of Samuel in the Old Testament.

At the very beginning of our service, Samuel was the key player in the biblical drama we had. Samuel was the one who anointed David king, who was able to listen carefully enough to God to see clearly. He saw past the muscles and the height and everything on the outside, to see instead what was invisible to the eye but obvious to God.

Samuel was a prophet so in tune with the Spirit of God that he could see things differently. He could see what God really wanted to do, and that was to make a little shepherd boy king.

There are some specific things I want us to look at in this story of David being anointed king, but before we open our bibles to that passage, we need to set the stage. We need to be able to see the ways that Samuel struggled to come to this place of seeing differently, how he had to take risks and fight thinking that was contrary to what God wanted.

Samuel is a powerful person in the history of Israel.

Given by his mother to God’s service as a child, he was born with an ability to hear God speak. From his childhood, when he brought horrible news from God to the priest Eli, his adopted father, from his childhood to old age, Samuel led Israel because he heard and obeyed the voice of God.

He was a prophet, but he also lived in the house of a priest. He was also the last of Israel’s judges, men and women who were set aside by God, raised up by the Spirit of God to lead Israel with wisdom.

But he failed with his own sons. The people saw that Samuel’s sons would not follow in his footsteps. Samuel’s sons were easily bribed and selfish. So when they knew Samuel was old, when they knew this unique man who so clearly heard the voice of God would be gone and that his sons wouldn’t take his place…they asked Samuel to anoint a king.

Samuel hated the idea. He seems to have taken some kind of personal offense to it, perhaps unable to see the ways his sons had failed. But God helped Samuel see that this wasn’t about him. This was about Israel’s continued rejection of God as their true king.

So Samuel gets dragged by the people and by God to unwillingly anoint a man named Saul king.

Reading about it in 1 Samuel, you see the interesting mix of things about Saul. In one way, he’s the obvious choice: he’s tall and good looking, he’s a natural leader, and there are even stories which show that God’s Spirit helped Saul prophesy and hear God’s voice, too. But he’s also described as from the least family in the least tribe, and on the day of his anointing, we see Saul hiding fearfully among the baggage so Samuel won’t be able to find him! This is a king?

Samuel is led by God to name a flawed man into a flawed role, a kingship that Israel shouldn’t have asked for. Maybe it’s not too surprising that Saul was a whopping failure as a king.

Here’s where things get weird, though.

After the last straw, after Saul is firmly on the throne but shows his complete disobedience to God…Samuel is mourning for Saul!

He’s mourning over a man who has disobeyed God, who is serving as a king that Samuel knew shouldn’t even exist.

Saul’s flashlight has somehow gotten gummed up by the darkness. The one man in all of Israel who clearly hears the voice of God has gotten cloudy, and is stuck in mourning when he shouldn’t.

Now we’re ready to look closely at the anointing of David. Turn with me to 1 Samuel, chapter 16. [READ 16:1]

God has moved on, but Samuel hasn’t.

Something that is still crystal clear about God to this day is that God is not overwhelmed when things go wrong. God is not stymied by the problems in the world. When someone fails, God is not paralyzed into inactivity.

God has a new plan and he’s ready to put into action. It’s Samuel that’s been co-opted by the wrong idea of a king; it’s Samuel who is stuck mourning over the wrong things.

Maybe you’re stuck mourning about something that God has or hasn’t done. Maybe you, like Samuel, are in a place where you’re not seeing correctly, where you think God is inactive and silent.

Maybe God is waiting for you to move on and see what he’s really up to! Step one of walking into the light and seeing differently is to move on from the things God has stopped working in. Then comes step 2 [READ 16:2-5]

God wants to move, and everyone else is afraid.

Samuel is afraid of Saul, afraid for his life, afraid for the power structures that obviously are against any new thing that God wants to do.

The people of Bethlehem see Samuel, the prophet of God coming, and they tremble with fear. Do you come in peace? Is this going to be ok? Why did YOU have to show up? You’re going to disrupt our lives.

This is the scary part about what God does. God disrupts our lives. God overthrows the people and things that are currently in power. The light and the power that are enough to wake the sleeper from the dead don’t fit very well in a world that is sleeping.

I wonder if we really are aware of how scary it is to call on God. I wonder if we also realize that scary isn’t bad. When God comes into our world and our lives, it is rightfully scary…we can’t expect that things will stay the same. But when God acts, it is ALWAYS good.

I think we, like Samuel, we have to battle our fear.

We have to battle our fear of others and even of God himself in order to be willing and ready to listen for God and to obey.

But it’s worth it to battle! It’s worth it to risk having others think we’re strange or even to come against us. It’s worth it to battle our fear of what might happen and our fear of change, because then we get to see what it is that God already has in mind, see what God is already doing.

That’s what’s so amazing to see in Samuel. He’s afraid, deathly afraid, but he obeys God and goes. He sees the big, tall, handsome brothers, and he wants to anoint them. But his mourning over Saul helps him to listen to God, helps him to go past what his eyes see to listen for God’s call.

And what God is already doing is preparing the little forgotten shepherd boy to be king. God is already molding his heart, already helping him fight lions and bears, already giving David courage.

When that little forgotten boy gets brought before Samuel, Samuel is brave enough to take the risk and anoint him to be king.

He’s risking his own life.

He’s risking looking like a fool. But this is the way God’s plan comes into being. Samuel’s obedience impacts David…it’s only after Samuel’s anointing that the Spirit of the Lord comes on David.

God’s activity in the world comes after fear, after risk taking, after listening, after brave action.

It takes all of those things to help Samuel see differently. May God help us push through our fear, take risks, listen, and bravely take action to see differently…to see the things God is already at work doing in our world, and to call them into being as we wait on God’s Spirit of power.