Day 95: Going to Samaria

Acts 8:2-25; Deuteronomy 33-34; Job 20

I’m pretty sure that Samaria was not a place that the Jews liked to visit.  However, I love that scripture records what happens there.  First, that the apostles go to undesirable place, speak to undesirable people, and see the life change happen.  God sometimes asks us to go places we don’t want to go.  Perhaps it is a direction in our lives that he points us and it is something that we don’t see as being fun or beneficial.  Sometimes God asks us to interact with people that we don’t like, or that don’t like us.  We are called to love everyone by sharing the message of Jesus and pouring out acts of love no matter who the person is.  And because the apostles went to this undesirable place, many people were saved.

God wants to give the “best the land can produce.” God doesn’t want to limit his blessings.  He doesn’t want to present us with junk.  God, the Lord of the universe, wants to give us the most beautiful blessings imaginable.  God loves us and wants us to show it too.  But, how does that happen?  By being obedient.  Sometimes, that is really hard, especially if he is calling us to do something hard or scary or talk to someone “undesirable.”  However, I have heard it said before that obedience is the greatest form of worship, and in return for that worship, the Lord will bless us.  Maybe not with material goods (they don’t matter anyway), but with the riches of the fruits of the spirit:  patience, kindness, goodness, self-control.

God showed Moses the promised land:  the one thing that Moses had been searching for all his life.  I imagine him on the top of that mountain, God speaking to him about the different beauties of the land.  Moses is standing there tall and strong, staff in hand, with tears of joy streaming down his face.  He knew that God had and would keep his promise.  Was he sad that he didn’t get to experience the thing he had worked so hard for?  Of course!  Who wouldn’t be!  But, he had done all that God had called him to do and he was able to see the beauty that awaited his friends and family, and so he could be joyful.