Spring 1965.
Jocie Brooke here, reporting from Hollyhill. As usual nothing much is happening around here. I don’t know how my dad finds enough stuff to put in the newspaper every week. He says that’s because I don’t know what people in small towns like to read in their paper. He says people like good news and nobody wants to read about murder and mayhem in their hometown.
Don’t you love that word mayhem? Well, I guess you shouldn’t love it. After all, it means really bad things are happening. I looked it up. Did you know you can sometimes find where words come from if you look hard enough? Anyway, mayhem comes from some French word that means to maim and so way back when, the word mayhem was used for a gruesome crime of deliberately injuring someone so they would have a permanent disfigurement. Now when people say mayhem they mean things are just all in a bad mess. So maybe I shouldn’t like the word after all. But if I’m going to be a writer someday and write for newspapers other than my dad’s, I need to learn all these kinds of words. Because whether mayhem happens in Hollyhill or not – and I hope it doesn’t – it is going to be happening somewhere.
Dad says bad things have been happening forever. Just think about stories in the Bible. Samson, for example. Here was this guy that had everything going for him. He was an Old Testament Hercules. Nobody messed with Samson without some mayhem happening. But he kept falling in love with the wrong women. And more than once. Nothing settled and easy for Samson. In fact after his first wife’s father gave her to another man, Samson got really upset and found 300 foxes and tied their tail together in pairs and put torches in the tails somehow. Then he turned them loose and the foxes ran into the Philistines’ fields of grain and vineyards and olive groves and everything burned up. But I can’t keep from wondering how Samson managed to hang onto 300 foxes.
Dad says I’m wondering about the wrong things. That I should be thinking more about how Samson was given great strength to lead his people and kept letting his personal desires lead him astray. You know, that problem of falling for the wrong woman. Especially when he fell for Delilah. The Lord made Samson super strong but you wonder how smart he was since Delilah tried to hand him over to the Philistines by tying him up the way he said would steal his strength three times before she worried him into telling her the real way was by cutting his hair.
The Bible says she pestered him daily with her words and pressed him so that his soul was vexed to death. Then she lulled him to sleep and had a man come in and shave off the seven locks of Samson’s hair. Poor Samson was done for. No longer the strong man he’d always been. He was Superman with kryptonite around. They took him prisoner, put out his eyes and made him work in their prison. But, and here is where you can see how the Lord never forgets somebody, Samson’s hair started growing back. I guess the Philistines didn’t think about that also growing back Samson’s strength.
Then came this day when the Philistines were having his big party and they thought it would be funny to bring Samson out the Bible says to perform for them. It doesn’t say so, but Samson must have been still pretty strong even without his God given super-strength. Even if he couldn’t break his chains, maybe he could still break boards or bend iron. I don’t know. The Bible just says perform. But anyhow, Samson, who was pretty driven by revenge, thought this was his chance. The Philistines had this boy leading Samson around and Samson got the boy to take him over to the pillars that supported the temple so he could lean against them. But when he could feel both of them against his arms he prayed “O Lord God, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!” Dad says that might not be the best prayer you can find in the Bible. Seems Samson was still focused on revenge. The thing is, Dad says, the Lord can use imperfect people to accomplish His purposes, and Dad says we all lack a lot being perfect.
In this story full of all kinds a mayhem, the Lord was freeing the Israelite people from the Philistines. The story about Samson and Delilah reminds us just how important it is to guard our hearts and follow God’s way. If you want to read all of Samson’s story you can find the whole bit in Judges 13-16.
So while they didn’t have the word mayhem around when the Bible was written, but it they had, they would have had plenty of chances to use it to describe what was happening.
Dad says maybe I’ve given him an idea for a series of sermons all about mayhem in the Bible if he thinks the Lord has messages for us in these stories. Me, I guess I’ll just go back to being glad no mayhem is happening in Hollyhill this week. We had plenty of that in those Heart of Hollyhill books. Wes says that was enough mayhem to last us all forever, and I guess it was.
What do you think about the story about Samson? Do you think we can learn anything from him?
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Welcome back, Josie! My reading this morning was the story of Samson from the book of Judges. I, also wondered about how he managed to corral those foxes! I don’t know about you, but I think the old testament, at least up to this point, has been quite violent!
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Jocie here. Right, Karen. Lots of mayhem. But Dad says we can learn from some of those stories. I sort of like the New Testament stories where Jesus is healing people and feeding people with the little boy’s lunch.
It’s neat that you read the story of Samson today. He was one of those people you might say was bigger than life. Not an average guy for sure, but in other Bible stories, the Lord does use the average guy, doesn’t he? Like Gideon. Maybe I should write about him sometime.
I enjoyed hearing from Jocie again with her refreshing perspective. What she says (writes) makes me pause and think. She’s probably grown by now, maybe moved away from Hollyhill. I wonder if she has pursued her dream of being a writer and how God is using her.
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Jocie here. Oh no, Jolene. I’m right here in Hollyhill. Wishing I was grown up, but Aunt Love tells me it’s foolish to wish your life away just to get old enough to drive or whatever. At the same time I think about being grown up, I sometimes want to stay the same. Be here with Dad and Wes with nothing ever changing. That’s not going to happen. Everything changes. But I do hope I can be that writer someday. Maybe the Lord will show me a way to use my writing for Him, and not just write pieces about the Little League ballgames for Dad’s paper.
Hi Jocie!
We can learn a wealth of things from Samson’s story, along with all the other stories in the Bible.
I told my Sunday school class once, (after a 10 year old said the Bible is boring), that the Bible has far more adventures, excitement and bloody scenes than Hollywood. All you have to do is read it. But thankfully, the center theme in the Bible is love.
I’m thankful Hollyhill isn’t full of much mayhem, Jocie. It’s a nice, quiet town that I like to visit from time to time. And now that spring is here, I’m sure it’s beautiful!
Thanks for sharing the story of Samson. I enjoyed it.
Until next time…have fun and say hello to the folks in Hollyhill for me. 😉
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Jocie here. I sure will tell everybody here in Hollyhill hello for you, Lavon. We love visitors. That’s sort of something happening in Hollyhill, but we don’t need the mayhem.
I’m glad you pointed out the central theme of the Bible being love. Dad says it’s good to remember the Lord’s two main commandments. To love Him and to love each other. Well, that’s the shortened version.
Flowers are blooming in Hollyhill. We have little planters on some of the street corners and some of the store people have pansies in them. The dogwood trees in all the yards are opening up. I love the yard where there are both white dogwoods and pink dogwoods close together. That looks so great. Hope you enjoy all the flowers your way too.
I love to hear from Josie!
I believe that a lesson from Samson could be to not take lightly what God has blessed us with…and He has blessed all of us with things that are unique to us..to use for His Kingdom. We need to treasure them and allow the Holy Spirit to guide us into the best way to glorify God and draw others to His glorious light.
I am wanting to visit Hollyhill again soon…hope there is another book in the making….:o)
Thanks for passing Josie’s comments on to us about ‘mayhem’. God bless you and yours, Connie
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Jocie here. I like what you said about what we can learn from the story about Samson. He had so much and it does seem like he could have done better with his gifts. But my dad likes this that he once heard an old preacher say. “The Lord can hit a mighty straight lick with a mighty crooked stick.” Dad says we’re the crooked sticks the Lord has to use to get things done sometimes. Samson was like that.
But you’re right that we need to appreciate our God given talents and use them the way we should.