CHAPLAIN’S WORD
regular in weekly worship, even if you weren’t raised in church, I bet you know at least one thing about Samson. All of us know that he was recorded and regarded as the strongest man in the Bible. Samson was gifted by God with extraordinary strength. Samson is so strong he defeated 1,000 of his ene- mies armed with only the jawbone of donkey. He’s so strong that he could kill a lion with his bear hands. With the strength given to him and the assignment to use it to free his people from Philistine threat, Samson should have been regarded as one of the greatest men God has ever called and used. But sadly, after the 16th chapter of Judges, Sam- son’s name is barely every mentioned in scripture again. There were no songs written or sung about him. His was not a name taught to the generations that came after him. Samson was strong but not sig- nificant, in fact he was so insignificant you’ve never even seen a church named after him – and we’ll name a church after just about anything and anyone in the bible. Samson may have been successful for a season but in the end his life failed
A Lesson in Weakness By Reverend Dr. Howard John Wesley
O ne of my favorite spiritual writers, Aiden Wilson Tozer, once wrote, “At the end of life what really matters most is not what we bought but rather what we’ve built, not what we’ve gained but what we’ve shared, not our competence but our char- acter, and not our success but rather our signifi- cance.” Tozer reminds us of
a disturbing but oh so prev- alent reality, you can buy but fail to build, you can be competent without char- acter, you can wear a title of authority and not have a name that is remembered, and you can be successful and not be significant. I ask you the question that I often ask myself, “will my life have mattered?” When all is done and our
strongest years are behind us and we face the journey to the Golden Shores, will our lives have mattered? That has to be the question Samson asked himself as he came to his end. You know Samson. His life story is succinctly recorded in scripture in the book of Judges. Even if you have never read Judges 13-16, even if you are not a
12 THE JOURNAL ♦ SUMMER 2023
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