The story of Samson begins before his birth. This is an important reminder that our story, and similarly our accomplishments, begins before our birth. If that is the case, then can we claim anything as our own? Is our own strength, our own progress, something we have accomplished or is something our forefathers have passed down from the beginning? Our blessings are not our own then but belong to our children and their children and so on and come from our ancestors.
The story begins with Israelites once again doing evil and this time God has turned them into the hands of the Philistines. Samson’s parents begin the story as childless and an angel appears to his mother telling her that she would have a son. She is told to raise him in the way of the Nazirite, without wine or shaving his head along with some other conditions.
Manoah, Samson’s father, asks the angel to return so that he too may hear how to raise the boy. The angel returns reinstructing Manoah in how to raise Samson. They offer sacrifice to the angel who is revealed to be the angel of the Lord. The woman gives birth and they raise Samson in the way of the Nazirite. At the end of the story, the spirit of the Lord begins to stir in Samson.
One of my main motivating factors in life is the passing on of my faith to my children and then watching them grow it beyond what I could imagine. It scares me to watch father after father fail to do just that in the Old Testament. It is, in my mind, one of the starkest contrasts between the New and Old Testaments. Faith was familial not just personal. As the story continues we will see Manoah pass on his faith to Samson. Manoah and his wife are faithful because they raise Samson as commanded. Samson and God will do more with that faith than they could have imagined. What will it be like to see our sons and daughters lift the faith beyond what we could even imagine? Maybe someone further down the road can comment on what it is like to see what can be achieved.