Scripture Daily

Context No. 1333 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

Context · Reflection

1 Samuel 9:6-11: in context

6The servant said to him, “Behold now, there is a man of God in this city, and he is a man who is held in honor. All that he says surely happens. Now let’s go there. Perhaps he can tell us which way to go.” 7Then Saul said to his servant, “But behold, if we go, what should we bring the man? For the bread is spent in our sacks, and there is not a present to bring to the man of God. What do we have?” 8The servant answered Saul again and said, “Behold, I have in my hand the fourth part of a shekel of silver. I will give that to the man of God, to tell us our way.” 9(In earlier times in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he said, “Come! Let’s go to the seer;” for he who is now called a prophet was before called a seer.) 10Then Saul said to his servant, “Well said. Come! Let’s go.” So they went to the city where the man of God was. 11As they went up the ascent to the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water, and said to them, “Is the seer here?”

Saul, sent out by his father to find some lost donkeys, has searched in vain and is ready to turn back. But his servant suggests another course: there is a man of God in the nearby city, held in honor, whose words always come true; perhaps he can tell them where to go. Saul worries they have no gift to bring, but the servant has a quarter-shekel of silver. A parenthesis explains that the prophet was in those days called a seer. Agreeing, they head up to the city, and on the ascent they meet young women coming out to draw water, and ask, is the seer here? It is the ordinary beginning of an extraordinary turn: Saul is about to meet Samuel and be anointed the first king of Israel.

What is striking is how mundane the errand is that God uses to redirect a life. Saul is not on a spiritual quest; he is looking for lost donkeys, an ordinary chore that has led him, apparently by chance, to the doorstep of the prophet who will anoint him king. He has no idea that the search for the animals is really God's way of bringing him to Samuel, that a failed errand is about to become the hinge of his whole life. The providence is entirely hidden inside the ordinary. And notice that the nudge in the right direction comes from a nameless servant, who is the one who remembers the man of God and proposes they go to him. God's steering of Saul's steps runs through a lost donkey and a servant's offhand suggestion, none of it looking like divine guidance at the time. There is encouragement here for reading our own ordinary days. The errands and detours and chance encounters that seem to have no larger meaning may be exactly the paths by which God is leading us toward something we cannot yet see. We rarely recognize the hinge moments as they happen; they look like looking for donkeys. God directs our steps through the mundane, and often uses humble people and ordinary circumstances to bring us where he means us to be.

Can I trust that God is directing my steps through the ordinary errands and chance encounters of my days, as he led Saul to Samuel through a search for lost donkeys, even when nothing about it looks like divine guidance at the time?

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