Samson and Delilah

I've always had a hard time reading the bible. I see others getting swept away in someone elses story and my whole being screams "RESIST." I hadn't even talked about the bible at Wednesday night youth group with my middle schoolers till yesterday.

Someone always lights a candle at the beginning of our time together and says "This is a symbol of God's presence among us." And at 7:30 we hold hands and pray, but that's the extent of our churchy stuff. Other than that I've just been playing twister and some other games or doing art with them.

But yesterday I asked them to name all the Bible stories they know. This was probably a mistake because they knew more bible stories than me. One that they name was Samson and Delilah...and I had not heard of it...but I just pretended to do the teacher thing...and said things like "and what happened in that story." Basically Samson was this brute could beat up anyone and fight whole armies. And Delilah wanted to turn him over to the Philistines by uncovering what gives him strength. It was his hair and once he revealed it to her she cut it off and handed him over to the Philistines...and then I think Samson prayed for God to punish the Philistines and then they were all crushed when a building collapsed or something like that.
I asked them to think of everyday things that paralleled the Bible stories they knew. And for this one Mya said that it was kind of like the Americans going into Iraq and cutting their strength from under them. 11 year olds sometimes can be smarter than we give them credit for.

I've been thinking about what gives me strength and how people can "cut it off." I think that the main thing that can cause me to lose my strength, like many people, is knowing that others are being super critical of me. It inhibits everythings I do and crushes me. On the flip side of that if I think someone just being a regular dose of judgemental I ignore their judgements and I guess that's where some of my strength and character can lie. I've been finding that most things are like that. The fine line that exists between all extremes. Opposites that are really close together... and the continuum is not a continuum at all but a circle where we all run on the same course. It seems that this hypocrisy of sorts would help us to come to more concrete truths in the world but instead the only truths I can find are that in the cosmic world there are only eternal questions.

Ok I think that's it for my loopy thoughts and religon. More later.