Good Morning?

Saturday dawned this morning with me in a foul mood.  I went to bed in a bad mood, and it didn't look better this morning... to me, anyway.

The sky was dark and cloudy and it was spitting rain... which really gets on my nerves.  Just rain, if you're going to, enough to sound good on the tin roof.  This half business does absolutely nothing for me, but make my dark mood even darker.

I sat on the couch for about thirty minutes, on Facebook, perusing and posting and feeling sorry for myself.  I'm ashamed to say, I didn't use that time like I needed to... like I knew I should.

I finally gave in to the nudging and picked up my Chronological Bible.  I am behind in my reading by over a month, so I opened to 1 Samuel.  Hannah has just had her prayers answered and Samuel has been sent back to the temple. 

Samuel is ministering to God and Hophni and Phineas are doing what they shouldn't be doing, and Eli is getting old and feeble and turning a blind eye to their sins... or maybe he's just overlooking them because he's their earthly father, and sometimes we tend to overlook things, because maybe we are partly to blame... revisiting the sins to the children and that kind of thing.

So, anyway, here's a young Samuel.  Ministering... working, serving.  Yet when God calls him in the middle of the night, he doesn't recognize God.  He didn't know God. 

He was doing lip service. 

Is that me?  Am I going through the motions and serving, doing the work... but not really hearing God?

Lord, forgive me.

And then I kept on reading.  I read about the Philistines taking the Ark of the Covenant... God's presence... and being plagued.  They sent it back to the Israelites!  I've read this part of the Bible a few different times and never realized this... but as I was reading, I thought about the difference between wanting His presence... and seeing Him as an inconvenience.  I think sometimes in our world, He's seen as an inconvenience... and people avoid Him.

Lord, help me not to do this... but to seek You.  Seek You first.  And look to You when I am wallowing.