Wednesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
God wakes us from our sleepiness and calls our name. This is Samuel’s experience in the temple. Samuel, who was already “a minister to the LORD,” and yet lived in a time when “a revelation of the LORD was uncommon and vision infrequent.” I wonder, was God infrequently revealing God’s self to the people? Was God not speaking and showing who God is and the path the people were called to walk?
I suspect it was not only Eli and Samuel who were asleep in the temple. But in the temple of God’s creation, I suspect the people were also asleep to the ways God was always and everywhere calling their name, reaching out, desiring to be known by God.
On this day, though, someone finally woke up! Samuel woke up to God calling. In fact, over and over again, he woke up until neither he nor Eli could ignore that it was God speaking. Samuel’s youthful eagerness to serve is clear. As soon as he understands, he responds, “Here I am. You called me.” As if to say, tell me how to serve, and I will serve.
God not only wakes us from our sleepiness but also heals us from all that gets in the way of our relationship with God and others. This is the experience of Simon’s mother-in-law. I imagine that as Christ “grasped her hand and helped her up,” Christ also spoke to her as he did to the hemorrhaging woman and the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:21-43). I also imagine that, although we do not have the names of these women, Christ spoke their names tenderly when he called to them.
What is Simon’s mother-in-law’s response? Her response in the Greek is “diakoneo,” here translated as “waited on,” and elsewhere translated as “ministered to” or” served.” Like Samuel, she was awakened by God, in her case, healed. Like Samuel, she was eager to respond with service, ministering to the needs of those around her.
Samuel and Simon’s mother-in-law are witnesses to the ways God wakes us up and heals us. Our natural response to God’s Love calling out to us, taking our hands, helping us, is to say, “Here I am.” To let God’s Love and healing presence overflow in us in lives of service and ministry.
—Kelly Adamson