daily java

Daily Java:

Samuel continued as Israel’s judge for the rest of his life. Each year he traveled around, setting up his court first at Bethel, then at Gilgal, and then at Mizpah. He judged the people of Israel at each of these places. Then he would return to his home at Ramah, and he would hear cases there, too. And Samuel built an altar to the Lord at Ramah. As Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons to be judges over Israel. Joel and Abijah, his oldest sons, held court in Beersheba. But they were not like their father, for they were greedy for money. They accepted bribes and perverted justice. (1 Samuel 7:15-8:3)

How is it that a good man can have sorry kids?

Samuel was a good man. He was judge of Israel and did everything he could to do what was right in God’s sight and God favored him.

Yet he had sorry kids. I suppose that one reason may have been what the scriptures above say: he was always traveling. He was never home to help raise them.

It is an occupational hazard of ministers and people like them that they are always so busy with other people that they tend to neglect their own families.

That may have been the case with Samuel. It also may have been the case that the kids were just sorry and they would have turned anyway. We are, after all, responsible for our own actions. Our parents’ child-rearing methods can only go so far as an excuse.

But you figure that God himself had one son that went bad. Luke 3:38 says that Adam was the son of God. And you remember what Adam did. He disobeyed the one thing God told him not to do and in doing condemned the entire human race to death.

If God can have a child go bad, and if a good man like Samuel can, so can anybody. Oddly enough, Samuel was raised by another good man, Eli, who also had sorry kids.

Sometimes it just happens.