Speak, Lord, Your Servant Is Listening

Thus said Samuel according the advice of the priest Eli: "Speak, Lord, Your servant is listening."

It is such a simple and powerful prayer.  It is also a prayer of vulnerability.

We mortal creatures don't like vulnerability.  We flee it like the proverbial plague.  Of course we say we want to hear the voice of the Lord, but we rarely allow ourselves to wait in silence and darkness to truly hear what He might say.

The story of Samuel has great comic potential.  It follows the formula for a comedic routine: he hears someone calling his name and immediately hops up to go ask Eli why he called him, but Eli tells him he must be imagining it and sends him back to bed.  The same exact thing happens the second time.  There you have your context set up.  The third time when it happens, it starts out the same way, but all of a sudden Eli realizes that God is calling Samuel.  If it weren't such a serious matter (and we hadn't heard the story a few too many times), we would laugh uproariously at this sudden upturning of our expectations.

It is easy to laugh at Samuel for not knowing that God was calling him because of course it is obvious to us.  Somehow, though, it doesn't seem that obvious in our everyday lives.

Perhaps we don't follow the Rule of Three in our lives, but I daresay there is enough material for humor there nonetheless.  We say we want to hear God's voice and so we start telling Him everything we need Him to do for us and how He ought to answer us and what our requirements and needs are and so on.  Then, before we have bothered to so much as ask Him what He thinks of all that, we hurry on to our duties and responsibilities and get all weighed down by what He isn't making clear for us.

Do you see the comic potential?