I Samuel

Lets dive right in, shall we?
1)Samuel. Obviously. Name of the book and all. Given by the Lord, his mother gave him to the Lord's service. He then went on to anoint future leaders for the Lord.
2)Here I am. Samuel says this numerous times, thinking it was Eli, and then realizing it is the Lord.
3)Saul. What a bundle of problems. He doesn't wait for Samuel, he has jealousy issues, and in the end he is rejected by the Lord because he does not obey God's instructions. In the end, he is shot by an arrow, and run through by a sword.
4)Problem sons. Eli's sons are sinning, Eli sees this is wrong, but he doesn't do anything. So they die. Samuel's sons were not fit to judge, and then there's Jonathan. He disobeys his father many times. However, you have to look at it in a different light later on in the book. In the end he is actually helping another.
5)David. We all know of the shepard boy, and his battle against a giant Philistine. How much else do we remember? He becomes Saul's son-in-law, has to flee from Saul, he leads many battles and he spares Saul's life on a couple of occasions. No wonder Saul was jealous of him, David seems like an all around good guy who can follow instructions, or sees where he has gone wrong.
6) I found a line that I wish I could scream to the Israelites. While they really didn't seem to have problems in this chapter, sometimes their leaders had problems. The line simply is "To obey is better than sacrifice" I Sam, 15:22. That's all God wants, is for us to obey him. In the end that is the greater gift than any amount of sacrificing.
Peace, Augusta