Stronger at the Very End

There was a man named Samson, and once he was the strongest man alive.

God gave him that strength, and not for showing off or winning applause. God gave it so Samson could rescue his people from the Philistines, who hurt them and made them afraid.

But Samson forgot whose strength it was. He used it carelessly. He gave away his secret to someone who did not love him. And one terrible day the Philistines caught him. They put out his eyes. They led him in chains into a dark he could never blink away.

Do you know that feeling? When you think: I had something good, and I wasted it. I had my one chance, and I ruined it.

Samson sat in that prison and surely thought it too.

Then the Philistines threw a great feast for their god, Dagon. Thousands of them, laughing and drinking, crowded onto the flat roof and packed into the temple below. "Bring out Samson!" they shouted. "Bring out the strong man, so we can laugh at him!"

So they led him in, blind and stumbling, while everyone roared.

But something small was happening that they missed. All that time in prison, his hair had been growing back. And his hair was the sign of the promise between him and God. Long before, when Samson was only a promise himself, an angel had told his mother that her son would begin to rescue Israel. God had not forgotten. In the dark, while no one was watching, something was being given back.

A young boy stood near. Samson asked him, gently, "Put my hands on the great pillars that hold up this place. Let me lean."

And there, blind and leaning, Samson did the bravest thing of his whole life. He prayed. "Lord, remember me. Please. Make me strong, just once more."

Then he reached out his arms, one hand on each pillar, and he pushed.

He pushed with everything left in him. The great temple groaned. The pillars cracked. The roof came crashing down, and Samson died there with his enemies. In his dying he rescued more people than in all his living.

Arms stretched wide, his greatest victory came in his death: the strong man, saving by giving himself away.

But Samson was only a shadow, a cracked and dim picture of Someone who was coming. Someone who would also stretch his arms out wide, not on stone pillars but on a wooden cross. Someone whose strength was love, and who never, ever wasted it.

And when that Someone died, he was winning the greatest victory of all. He was rescuing more people than anyone could count, every single one of them dear to him, not one of them forgotten.

Samson saved with his last breath, and then he was gone.

The One he pointed to saved with his last breath too. But on the third morning he opened his eyes in the dark, and he stood up, and he walked out alive.