The Wisdom of Sampson

Judges 16

Sampson taught me my first glimmer of wisdom. I was in the sixth grade and madly infatuated with a handsome boy in my Sunday youth group. He, in turn, was infatuated with someone else.

The someone he was infatuated with wasn’t a very nice girl. She attended church only under duress and while there pouted, snarled, and pretty much tried to make the rest of us miserable. I couldn’t understand why he liked her, yet I tried my best to act just like her so he would like me!

One Sunday, after having said something mean, despicable and nasty to a visiting teen (who probably thought she’d landed in the only Sunday School class in hell), my wannabe paramour finally noticed me with approval — but I was feeling rather sick to my stomach and ashamed of myself.

Mrs. Worthington stepped into the room to start class and I stared at my lesson book in misery while we read about Sampson and Delilah. While listening to the story, I could see the boy I’d been trying to impress still laughing about what I’d said. I could see the new girl trying not to cry. And I felt abominable.

And somewhere in all of that, I realized I was behaving just like Sampson! I wanted someone who wasn’t worth my time or effort, and because of it, I was doing incredibly horrid and self-destructive things.

Poof! Infatuation ended. I did try to apologize to the new girl, but she wasn’t very receptive — not that I blame her. And I walked out of that classroom a bit older and wiser than when I walked in.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under meditation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.