He woke up thinking everything was the same. Nothing was.
📖Based on Judges 16:20
She had asked him three times.
Three times she had tried to find the source of his strength.
Three times he had lied to her.
Each time she had proved she would use what he told her.
She had called the Philistines while he slept.
Three times.
And three times he had broken free.
Then she said: How can you say I love you when you don't trust me?
She pressed him daily.
She tormented him with her words until he was vexed to death.
He told her everything.
He said a razor had never touched his head.
That if he were shaved, his strength would leave him.
She sent for the Philistines. Made sure they brought the money.
She put him to sleep on her knees.
She had a man shave off the seven locks of his hair.
She said: The Philistines are upon you, Samson.
He woke up.
He thought he would go out as at other times and shake himself free.
He did not know that the LORD had left him.
That sentence sits in the text like a stone.
He did not know.
The Philistines seized him.
They put out his eyes.
They brought him to Gaza.
They bound him with bronze shackles.
He ground grain in the prison.
But the text adds one small note.
His hair began to grow again.
He was brought out at a festival to perform for the crowds.
He asked the boy leading him to let him feel the pillars.
He pushed.
The house fell on the lords and all the people in it.
More died at his death than in his life.
But he died with them.
He had been given something extraordinary.
And he had given it away one question at a time.
To someone who had never hidden what she intended to do with it.
Scripture — Judges 16:20
"And she said, The Philistines be upon thee, Samson. And he awoke out of his sleep, and said, I will go out as at other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him."
Reflection
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He didn't notice the departure. It didn't announce itself. The strength was simply gone when he reached for it.
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She had shown him three times what she would do. He told her anyway. That choice is harder to explain than any other in his story.