DAILY BYTE
Unless our faith seriously impacts our ‘real worlds,’ then it probably won’t amount to much at all.
John Ortberg tells the story of a guy named Charlie Shedd. He was a great speaker and before he had children he used to do this talk called: ‘The Ten Commandments for Raising Perfect Children!’ Then he had a child and changed the title of his talk to ‘Ten Helpful Hints for Parents.’ Then he and his wife had a second child and he changed the talk again, this time to ‘A Few Tentative Suggestions for Fellow Strugglers.’
Then he had a third child and he just quit doing the talk altogether.
Because life is undoubtedly difficult and there is so much that often goes wrong. We may plan as carefully as possible and things still go horribly wrong. Sometimes we think we know the secret to it all, like our friend Charlie Shedd, but life is always a lot harder in practice.
Complications arise, unaccountably something interferes and we land flat on our faces. Because of the weather or Murphy’s Law or just what Eugene Peterson calls ‘the general cussedness of life.’
This is why the question we need to be wrestling with is not how ‘real’ is God, but how ‘real’ is my faith. When everything goes horribly wrong as it so often does, when everything that I seemed so sure of before is thrown into doubt – how does my faith stand up? How do I react?
This is where I want to introduce you to a particular story in the life of David that has much to teach us about the relentless persistence of real faith in the ‘real world.’
When we first meet David, it seems as if he is on a one way ticket up. Everything he touches turns to gold. Talk about your upwardly mobile, but David goes from being a simple shepherd boy from a nondescript family to being the finest captain and leading solder in King Saul’s army in no time at all.
How’s this for a CV? 1. Killed a rampaging, steroid-munching giant named Goliath. 2. Was the best friend of the King’s son – Jonathon. 3. Ended up marrying the King’s daughter – Michal. 4. He was the King’s top soldier and also his favourite musician, the only one able to bring Saul out of his dark, depressive moods.
None of these could exactly be called bad career moves!
It’s no wonder that David soon became a celebrity all over Israel. They loved this guy with people singing songs about how if King Saul had killed thousands of Philistines, well then, David had killed tens of thousands. If Oprah had been around, David would have been on her show twice a year – that’s how popular he was!
But remember – life is difficult and after this David’s life encountered a turn for the worse. We will be looking to learn from this as we look more closely at his experiences tomorrow.
PRAY AS YOU GO
O God, we do know that life at times can be terribly difficult, even cruel. We pray that as we devote ourselves to learning from David’s story over the next few days, you would mould and form us so that we will be able to remain faithful to you even when our lives hit rocky patches. Amen.
FOCUS VERSE
1 Samuel 18. 5-6 (NIV)
Whatever Saul sent him to do, David did it so successfully that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the people, and Saul's officers as well.
When the men were returning home after David had killed the Philistine, the women came out from all the towns of Israel to meet King Saul with singing and dancing, with joyful songs and with tambourines and lutes. As they danced, they sang:
"Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his tens of thousands."
