I Want It Now!

The hair on the back of my neck just stood up.

The same way that it stood up when I was a kid during the Super Bowl. While the Dallas Cowboys kicked somebody’s rear in one room, we non-NFL fans holed up in another and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Between the Oompa Loompas looking just a little too much like the scary Jolly Troll in the smorgasbord commercials and the maladjusted characters not getting what they deserved quite soon enough, it’s an old movie I love to hate. Or hate to love. Or something.

It’s one of my all time favorites but still one that creeps me out a little.

On today’s reading of Judges 14 (you don’t want to know for which numbered time), Samson’s giving me that same sick chill.

When he demands that his parents fetch him up a cute Philistine bride, it is as though he’s just slipped into Veruca Salt’s prim red dress and Mary Janes and taken over the Golden Egg Room at the factory. As Veruca implores her doting father to procure a goose that will lay golden eggs (one hundred a day) and lay out a feast for her (of beans, no less), Samson joins in with a rousing chorus of I want it now!

All the while, I find myself wanting to nudge them both a hair closer to the Bad Egg Chute.

::

[Feed readers may need to click here for the video.]

::

The first we see of Samson grown up is in Timnah, where a Philistine girl gives him goosebumps. Golden-egg-laying goosebumps.

For Samson, this is it. She’s the one. And he wants her. Now.

He returns home and insists that Manoah and his wife get her for him. Now.

Samson went down to Timnah and saw there a young Philistine woman. When he returned, he said to his father and mother, “I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife.”

His father and mother replied, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people? Must you go to the uncircumcised Philistines to get a wife?”
But Samson said to his father, “Get her for me. She’s the right one for me.”

His parents fall to their knees. This set-apart son of ours, he’s nothing but trouble.

Of course they won’t go get her. There are plenty of Hebrew girls that will do just fine.

They beg him to reconsider. We’ll get you a sweet girl from our own people. Why would you want a Philistine? Work with us here, ok? Any girl you want. As long as she’s one of our own.

Samson would have none of it. I want her now!

They put up a good fuss, but in the end their protests amount to no more than well practiced lip service. Samson will have what he wants, as it seems likely he always has done. Manoah pulls out his check book to start talking turkey with Mr. Wonka and make a deal for the golden goose.

::

I’m no parenting expert. Just ask my kids.

The last time I had any parenting encouragement to offer was fifteen years ago  in a circle of my youth group parents as we worked through a study on raising teenagers. My pregnant belly protruded  far into the room, filled to near overflowing with my first to-be-born. I’m sure I said a lot of brilliant things with which my anteparenting mind seemed also to be quite pregnant.

Once he was born, my belly and my brain grew much smaller in direct proportion, and I had no more brilliant things to say.

So far be it from me to school Manoah and his wife on raising a child.

Particularly a chosen, set-apart child.

Jennifer wondered in the comments yesterday what may have made Samson different from John the Baptist or Samuel, in that they took hold of the special purpose to which they were called, while Samson seemed to milk his status for his own pleasure.

I have a funny feeling it may have had something to do with his overindulgent parents.

I can’t imagine that the whole I want the pretty Philistine girl and I want her now! thing started with this single episode. My hunch is that in an effort to say No to the important things, they said Yes a little too often.

After all, the angel’s directive was clear.

No wine. Check.

No haircuts. Check.

No dead bodies. Check.

But he didn’t say anything about Philistine sweeties.

I wonder if, perhaps, they saw their job as far too small.

::

Raising a chosen one was no small task. I wonder sometimes how Hannah and Zechariah and Elizabeth did it. How Joseph and Mary did it.

Who wants to be the parents who screwed up the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines? Or the raising up of a priest who would anoint Israel’s first king?

Or worse, the Messiah?

Nobody wants to be that guy.

Manoah and his wife sure didn’t.

And maybe that affected their approach to parenting this hairy handful.

::

And then, I wonder some more.

No angelic vision preceded the birth of my children.

Are they any less chosen?

Have they any less purpose?

Yes, they are of less import than the Messiah. But did Peter’s parents realize while they grew him up the man he would become? I doubt it.

Did David’s? Read his account again — his whole family wrote off the shepherd boy, and his dad didn’t even include him in the king audition lineup with his brothers.

Did Martin Luther’s? Or John Calvin’s? Or Billy Sunday’s?

From time to time I suppose they may have seen a glimmer. But they couldn’t have imagined. Not completely.

God sees who my kids will be. More often I worry about screwing them up, dreaming far less of who they might become.

Because of that, perhaps I say No when I should say Yes, and Yes when I should say No.

And even more likely, I perhaps say too much when I should just listen.

I might find myself squishing them into my dreams rather than waiting for God’s dreams to play out.

I want to dream God’s dreams.

Maybe it’s even fair to say that I want that now.

::

Coincidentally, an inspiring post on raising kids
with Jesus in them is up at Getting Down with Jesus.
Check it out.

More posts in the Samson series:
Samson and Me
Rhythm
The Wasteland
Meet the Parents
I Can’t Handle the Truth
Business Up Front, Party in the Back