The Slow Drift...

As I sat down today evening to read the Bible, I found myself reflecting on the many seasons of my life. I could clearly see moments where God carried me through challenges I never thought I would survive. His faithfulness was undeniable. And yet, I also became aware of seasons where I failed to see Him, not because He wasn’t present, but because I had slowly lost awareness of His nearness.

Have you ever been in a place like that?

The enemy rarely pulls us away all at once. It’s more like a slow poison. Not the seconds hand of a clock, obvious and fast, but the hour hand - moving so slowly that we hardly notice it. And yet, over time, even a small shift is enough to move us away from the prize set before us.

I saw this same pattern in the life of Samson. He knew who he was - a Nazirite, called and set apart. The Spirit of the Lord moved through him. He defeated the Philistines with a jawbone. God even gave him water when he was exhausted. But somewhere along the way, Samson began to assume that the strength was his own. He started playing with fire.

That felt uncomfortably familiar.

When I moved to a new city for work, everything looked good on the outside. A new job, a pay bump, visibility, new friends. One evening, a colleague asked if we could go for a drink. It felt harmless. Casual. Just once and that’s how it began.

What started casually became routine. Laughter turned into habit. Gossip became normal. Drinking stopped being a choice and became part of the day. It even spilled into weekends. Eventually, it took only one phone call for the liquor shop vendor to keep things ready as I stepped out of my home. Somewhere along the way, I became what people casually call a regular.

Back in Judges, Delilah asks Samson the same question again and again: “Tell me where your great strength lies.” What struck me was that Samson’s answers moved closer to the truth each time. Not suddenly, but gradually. He gave away pieces of himself little by little. The real turning point wasn’t the scissors but it was sleep. Samson slept on her lap. He found comfort in the wrong place. He rested where he should have remained alert.

And then comes one of the most haunting verses in Scripture: “He did not know that the LORD had left him.”

Samson didn’t lose his strength all at once. He lost awareness first. The outward fall only revealed an inward drift that had already taken place.

Eventually, Samson finds himself blind and bound, grinding grain. Yet even there, God’s mercy remains. His hair begins to grow again. Strength returns but not as entitlement, but as grace.

This story made me pause and reflect again to introspect myself, where I might be overlooking the slow drift in my own life. Sometimes the danger isn’t rebellion, it’s comfort. Sometimes repentance begins not with dramatic change, but with noticing.

God is faithful, even when we lose awareness. And the story doesn’t have to end where we fell.