DAILY BYTE
Today we continue to look at the story of David and Goliath in order to see what it can teach us about dealing with our fears. We pick up the story just after David arrives in the Israelite camp to bring food to his brothers. David is shocked at how everyone has been stuck down by ‘Goliath-sickness’ and are cowering before their fears. David immediately offers to take up the giant’s challenge.
Why did he do this? At a surface level, David was probably the least equipped person there for the task of giant-slaying. He wasn’t yet a full-grown man and he wasn’t a trained soldier – there were many others there that day who were tougher, stronger and more skilled fighters.
But you see the difference between David and the rest wasn’t at a surface level, the difference was within. David’s perceptions were not controlled by his fears no matter how big because he did not have a Goliath-dominated worldview but a God-dominated one. God was David’s reality and giants didn’t figure largely in his understanding of the world – the real world.
David learnt this worldview in Bethlehem’s hills and meadows, working as a shepherd. There David immersed himself in the largeness and immediacy of God. Read carefully what Eugene Peterson says about this experience: ‘David had experienced God’s strength in protecting the sheep in his fights with lions and bears. He had practiced the presence of God so thoroughly that God’s word, which he couldn’t literally hear, was far more real to him than the lion’s roar, which he could hear. He had worshiped the majesty of God so continuously that God’s love, which he couldn’t see was far more real to him than the bear’s ferocity which he could see. His praying and singing, his meditation and adoration had shaped an imagination in him that set each sheep and lamb, bear and lion into something large and vast and robust: God.’
And it was from this worldview that David operated – a worldview dominated by God and shaped during worship. It was why a puny, little teenage kid could do what bigger and stronger soldiers couldn’t … face his fears.
And that’s exactly what worship can shape in all of us as well! This is what we should be reminded of every Sunday when we worship in church, and every day when we worship alone or with friends and families: That God is larger and more vast and more robust than even the very worst of our fears. That God is with us and that God loves us as his beloved children.
For if we open our hearts to that love, to the reality of it for us, the taste, smell and feel of it, well then we are given ultimate reason and hope to overcome our fears. Giant-like though they may be, they are nothing when compared to the vastness of God’s love.
Love drives out fear!
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord, this is why we worship you – because we need to. For it is when we immerse ourselves constantly in your presence, that our souls and spirits are shaped in your image. We are reminded that you are bigger and more powerful than anything else and that you love us deeply and so we are given courage and purpose to meet our fears head on because of that love. Thank-you for the gift of that love and the courage it continually brings to us. Amen.
FOCUS READING
1 Samuel 17. 33- 37 NIV
Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth." But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine."
