Lent is a time to listen, to see, to sense, and to pray. It is a time to give space for the light of Christ to penetrate the fog and shine through the darkness. It is a time for us to be and share that light with each other and the world around us. It is a time for us to offer big and little gifts of revelation.
Jesus’s healings were primarily symbolic actions, meant to violate and disrupt the social order of his day. They were challenges to the structures that defined who counts as human, because the kingdom of God has a scandalously different definition of who does.
Demons are one way Christians have talked about this idea that really, the essential you, past your mental and psychological baggage, past the body and its abilities, past the mood fluctuations and mindfulness exercises, deep down past your DNA and your questionable wardrobe choices, there is a you. Of course, we’re careful to say all of those outside things matter in the growth of a soul, you are an embodied being — but that there’s something intrinsic and wholly good at every person’s core. We call it the image of God. Sometimes this image is hidden, obfuscated under complicated and interwoven layers of choices and influences. But it is there in you — and everyone who has ever lived.
The hope buried in the heartbreaking story of Jonah is that it asks us whom it would hurt us to see forgiven. And it asks us to see the mercy of God extending to them, not only for their sake, but for ours. For opening yourself to the One who so fervently adores precisely these, is to apprehend just how near that fervent love has also always been to you.
There could be no Samuel without an Eli. And there could be no Eli without a Samuel. Samuel went on to live out the lessons Eli taught him. He stood up to kings, He told truth to power. And he never stopped listening to the voice of God.