Waiting for David: 1 Samuel 16

This is the first of a three-part series by Felicia Schneiderhan on 1 & 2 Samuel.

A turning point in my faith came when I stopped disagreeing and debating with everything I read in the Bible ("Nobody lives to 800!"). I began reading the Bible as a story of how people relate to God. And then I opened Samuel, which is the story of how I relate to God.

Samuel, the prophet, is mourning because the first king, Saul, is not doing so hot. God tells Samuel to go see Jesse of Bethlehem, that one of his sons will be the next king.

In Bethlehem, Jesse parades out seven sons. They all look like strong men who would make a good king and Samuel's ready to pick one. But God tells Samuel, don't focus on outward appearance – God looks at the heart; and as each of the seven pass in front of him, Samuel knows he's not the one. When all seven have gone by, Samuel asks Jesse, "Are these all the sons you have?"

When I heard this read in Mass one Sunday, I laughed out loud. Samuel has just seen seven fit, strong, intelligent young men, and he has the gall to ask Jesse, "Um, do you have any more sons?"

Of course, there is one – the youngest, out tending the sheep. Samuel tells Jesse to send for him, that they won't sit down till he gets there. Maybe you know the rest of the story – ruddy little David appears, God tell Samuel, "Rise and anoint him; he is the one," and David starts his journey to becoming Israel's king.

We never know what we'll find in the Bible that we will relate to, what story will open up the text for us, show us how applicable it is in our lives today. For me, this story suddenly made the entire Bible very alive, very current.

I am like Samuel in nearly every decision I make. I get nervous about making important decisions and, afraid I'll chose wrongly, or that I won't get what I need, I'll grab the first thing I see because it looks fine on the outside. My impatience is based on fear and selfishness. I fear the space of not knowing, and so I make a decision as quickly as possible to fill it up.
But I am learning to wait. I am learning to go where God leads me, and then wait for His choice to appear.

Last month, my husband and I moved from Chicago to northern Minnesota. For two months I searched for a place to live and kept coming up with nothing. Things would seem fine out the outside, but something would tell me, wait, wait. And then, two weeks before we were set to move, when I was starting to get a little panicked, we found a place more perfect than we could have imagined. It's better than anything I could have requested from God, reminding me that His will for me is always better than any laundry list of requests I could write.

Like Samuel, I have to remember just to keep standing until the right king appears.
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Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Duluth, Minnesota.

Photo from Felicia's camera.  Her own, Duluth-based David.

At God’s Table

I had been dating my husband just a few months when he invited me to come to church with him. I was hesitant. I hadn’t been to church in a long time. I had found too much to disagree with and had walked away.

He convinced me. I don’t know what I expected to happen. I had this strange irrational fear that an invisible barrier would bar me from coming in. “Our Doors Are Open Wide,” the sign said.

When I entered, I asked God if it was okay. I was filled with an overwhelming sense that of course it was okay, I was always welcome – that the only thing holding me back was me.

As a kid, I was a passionate practicing Catholic. I fervently prayed the rosary; I had deep discussions with God. I took each sacrament seriously. During high school, I taught CCD, attended retreats, and was a lector at Sunday Mass.

In my late teens and throughout my twenties, I had too many reasons to stay away. Some were my own willful desires to be in charge, to rebel. But mostly, I found too much I disagreed with.

I am reminded of something the Dalai Lama said, told to me by a Tibetan living in exile; when approached by a western Christian who wanted to convert to Buddhism, the leader of Tibet suggested he stay in the religion into which he was born, because it still had a lot to teach him.

I learn as much – maybe more – from what I disagree with. It forces me to look within, to dialogue with God, to see what it is I do believe and why – and then to look again at the thing I disagree with, which is usually an interpretation of scripture or doctrine. Text is always up for re-interpretation, and in fact must be reinterpreted, by many people, in many ways.

Too many of the disgruntled are leaving the table. In the Catholic Church today, we need to keep the disenfranchised voice at the table.

It’s easy to get up from the table when no one is listening to you and you don’t like the side dishes, even when you are hungry. It’s easy to refuse the whole meal and get up in search of another. But the harder path is to stay for what you came – the main dish – which everyone will alter slightly with condiments to suit their own tastes, and everyone will take a different part (this one likes white meat, this one likes the dark) – salt, pepper, ketchup, steak sauce – we are all sharing the body of Christ in the Eucharist. What is even more challenging is not to sit silently as you share the meal, quietly observing a discussion with which you passionately disagree, but to raise your voice and take issue, in the way God has set out for you – with kindness and compassion, with tolerance for others but still speaking your own truth as God speaks within you.

Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where she lives year-round on a boat with her husband Mark. Visit her blog at Life Aboard Mazurka.

Why Jesus?

On my husband Mark's last birthday I took him to see a play at the Lookingglass Theater in downtown Chicago, then to the Signature Room lounge atop the John Hancock building. We sat before a table of cocktails, cheese, and chocolate cake, overlooking the sparkling skyscraper rooftops against the black backdrop of vast Lake Michigan.

Something about the vantage point – watching the city we love at night from high above– led our conversation away from the ordinary.

"But why Jesus?" I asked him. "Why do you think it's important that Jesus was the son of God? Why does it matter?"

He answered that Jesus went to the very depths of despair in people – the lowest of the low – and embraced them, and suffered alongside them.

Imagine for a moment that God couldn't go into the depths of sin – but a human could, and God as human could. Why Jesus? Because that's how God sent Himself into the depths of human despair and suffering. He wanted to reach us in the places we hide. Where do we hide? In vice, debauchery, hatefulness, violence. In power trips, in gossip, in the place we believe we are cast out, invisible, worthless.

God wanted to come after us. Whatever capacity and craving we have for sin, he wanted to call us back to him, make it possible for us to come to him – he wanted to reach us where we were.

God waits for us at the bottom, at the place we think we can't go any lower. Christ went into the deep, horrible places. He brought fishers of men along with him. He waits at the bottom for us, and then when he helps us up, he gives us reels to bring others.

God doesn't ask anything of us that he wouldn't do Himself. He went to the bottom to give us hope – to show a way out. He sends us to do the same.

Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where she lives year-round on a boat with her husband Mark. Visit her blog at Life Aboard Mazurka.

The Devil Within

Early one morning when I was in grade school, I approached my dad with the moral dilemma troubling me big time. "If we're supposed to love everyone, what about the devil?" He answered, "You can love the devil, but not the devil's ways." This made sense and gave me some peace.

As an adult, I have sought a simple idea such as this one to help me wrap my mind around how I can understand the devil today. Does the devil even exist? In biblical stories the devil takes all manner of form – the snake, the trickster – to pull one over on us.

And then there is Christ's response to the Pharisees when they question why his disciples break the tradition of the elders and don't wash before they eat.

"Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.' …For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts…" (Mark 7:14-20)
The devil is not some outside force, peering in at the window, ready to strike us at our weakest points. Just like God dwells in each of us, so can the devil.

Was it really the snake who tempted Eve in the garden? Or was it more like Eve was hanging out in the garden, kind of bored, and a snake of an idea slithered into her mind – there's a tree smack in the middle of everything that God said don't touch…hmmm…wonder what would happen if I touched it?  

The force that separates me from God comes on most strongly when I am bored, when I'm frustrated and anxious and fearful, and, surprisingly, when I am right. Oh, how I love to be right! How I love to lord it over other people that I am right, and then the little devils get loose in my mind and go to all the places where I am right-right-right. Because when I am feeling right, then I don't need God.

The devil, at its core, is the idea that I am God.

Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where she lives year-round on a boat with her husband Mark. Visit her blog at Life Aboard Mazurka. 

The Purpose of Prayer

My best friend Jill was 31 years old and five months pregnant with her first child when she developed breast cancer.

People around us began to pray. "I have whole churches in Texas praying for me," Jill joked.

I couldn't see the purpose of prayer. If God wanted something to happen, then it would happen, and we would have to trust His reasoning. Like maybe there was a reason for Jill being 31 years old and pregnant with her first baby and suddenly a five-centimeter tumor grows in her breast.

My mom says prayer is like asking your parent for something – maybe your dad doesn't know you want that new bicycle until you ask. I've found this to be a common idea; prayer is a gentle nudging to God to grant your request. Please help me pass this test, please help me get a new job, please save my friend from cancer so she can raise her baby.

My friend Mary reasoned that maybe it's not that God is going to grant me my wish – rather, in the process of prayer, I connect to the divine, so I can see the bigger picture, or at least what I can do, and then I can act in alignment with God's will.

Jesus told the disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." (Matthew 9:35) They were, in effect, praying for themselves – they were the first farmhands, and through their work, they would attract more farmhands.

God seeps in through the cracks created by our own weakness, our own ineptitude. He sneaks into the places where we don't have it all figured out. Through prayer, we allow God to intervene in our lives, by opening ourselves and becoming willing to do God's will.

Jill has been cancer-free for more than a year. Little Sophia is 17 months old, bright and vibrant and healthy. I had nothing to do with this. But through prayer, I was able to show up for her, to be present during some of the roughest times in her treatment. When I couldn't be present, I prayed.

Now, I pray for other people daily. I pray simply their names. I don't know what is best for them, I don't know God's will for them, but I do know their names, and I know they need God in some way. I ask Him to help in whatever way is best. I tell Him I trust His will for them. I pray for my relationships with people. I pray to be the best wife/daughter/sister/friend/employee/co-worker/neighbor/fill-in-the-blank relationship I can be.

In more than a year doing this, I see people's lives changing – most of all my own.

I try to remember to say thank you.

Felicia Schneiderhan is a freelance writer based in Chicago, where she lives year-round on a boat with her husband Mark. Visit her blog at Life Aboard Mazurka.