Helplessness

A bad situation can get worse.  That is what happened in the time we are reading about.  The nations of that area were loose confederations of cities with unregulated borders.  When one group wanted to gain power (usually territory, or people, or goods) they would gather their trained men and challenge a neighbouring nation.  The Philistines challenged Israel, and Saul had to collect Israelite men and go to war. 

David was too young to be a soldier (you had to be over 20 years old) so he went off back to his sheep.  At home his new experiences as a palace servant didn’t make any difference to the way he was treated.  So when three of his brothers join Saul’s army, David also became a messenger going backwards and forwards between home and the battle-field to take supplies and bring back news. 

So there David was, back in the position of being bossed around by everyone.  There is a record of how his brother spoke to him when he visited the army. He says, “… with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness?  I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is ….”  It seems that David was regarded with disdain by his brothers, and treated as little more than a nuisance. 

It is encouraging to realise that David was able to become a confident and compassionate leader in spite of growing up in a discouraging family.  He seems to have allowed these early experiences to build good things into him, instead of letting them break him down.  There are many examples of his good leadership.  One is that he made it a rule that the soldiers who stayed with the supplies got equal shares with those who went into battle.  Another is that he was willing to listen to advice.

So I am able to ask myself whether there are horrible family experiences which influence my life.  When there are, the real question is:  Do I learn to be a better person because of them, or do I become a nasty person like those who mistreated me? 

The record of this can be found in the Bible, 1 Samuel 17:1-31

http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=1+samuel&chapter=17 

Recognised – in a small way

Saul was the king who had begun to go wrong.  Unfortunately, often when anyone chooses to do the wrong thing other aspects of their lives start to unravel.  He did not want to do things God’s way, so God’s Spirit can no longer be with him.  Saul starts to have black moods – the writer calls this an evil (or harmful) spirit from God.  We don’t know what that means, whether it was some disturbance from outside of himself or whether it was a psychological disturbance from within him.  What we do know is that once he had rejected God as part of his life and leadership, somehow he was open to whatever caused this dark space for him.

This doesn’t mean that clinical depression and other mental or psychological illnesses are a sign that a person has chosen not to follow God – there are plenty of examples in the Bible of people who deeply follow God and yet suffer from the blackness of depression or mental instability.  However in this case the start of Saul’s struggle is linked to his rejection of God.

People around Saul tried to work out what could be done to help his terrible mood swings into the darkness.  On suggestion was music.  How sensible.  Today, music has been “rediscovered” as one therapy which can be helpful in such situations.  

Now here is where the story gets that interesting twist which so often occurs in life, and which seems to be one of God’s special ways of intervening in his world.  David (our “chosen outsider”) is a musician who someone in the palace happens to know! 

They send for him.  He is an excellent musician (he wrote nearly half the songs recorded in the Bible’s songbook).  When David plays Saul’s black mood lifts.  What an irony!  The person who going to become the good leader God wants is now there in the palace serving the king who is deteriorating into a terrible leader. 

He faithfully serves; he does a good job, just like he did as a shepherd.  But more than that, he improves life for someone who is not a nice person. Effectively, from this low-status position he is already helping the nation by keeping Saul from becoming completely dysfunctional.  In this strange way, God is already using David to improve things for the people he will one day lead.

David invites me to consider the situations where I am given the task of helping someone else.  Do I have the humility to do a good job of building someone else up?  When I am powerless, am I willing to be a hidden enabler of the powerful?  I’m not talking here about someone who is secretly holding the power, but someone who is simply enabling the one who holds the power to be a better person than they would otherwise.

The record of this can be found in the Bible, 1 Samuel 16:14-23

http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=1+samuel&chapter=16 

Then nothing ...

When David arrived – young, healthy and smelling of the outdoors – Samuel realised that this young brother who hadn’t been important enough to even come to the party was the one God had chosen to lead the people.  So David is anointed in front of his seven big important brothers, and his father. 

Pouring oil on someone was a way of signalling that they were specially honoured in some way.  In certain situations it was a way of appointing someone to an important position.  Here Samuel (in semi-secret) is stating that God has chosen David to be the next king. 

But the interesting thing is that his life as hard-working junior member of the family is far from over.  The writer tells us that from then onwards God was with him in a special way … but at first David is just sent back to the sheep by his family.  Nobody recognises anything special about him even though “from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David”. 

So there he is, being powerfully close to God … among the sheep.  In a later incident David explains that he experienced God with him in this “outsider” task, enabling him in the dangers of protecting the sheep.  He even wrote a very famous song about God, still used 3000 years later, which relied on his shepherd experiences.

Maybe this is a reminder that my life is not barren just because other people don’t appreciate me.  Productivity, recognition and success are less important than I think.  The thing that seems to have set David apart here was his awareness of the significance of inner life, his conscious connection to God.  This challenges me to value this inner reality more than the externals which my urban success-culture esteems.

The record of this can be found in the Bible, 1 Samuel 16:12-13&19; also 1 Samuel 17:34-37 and Psalm 23.

http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=1+samuel&chapter=16

http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=psalm&chapter=23

Outsider in the Family

This is a record of something that happened about three thousand years ago in the Middle East.  Things were very different, so different that we might wonder whether there is any point to reading the story today.  There is – because as we read we discover that people haven’t changed, and if the Bible is right about God, he hasn’t changed either. 

This saga opens with things ready to go wrong in the small collection of tribes where David lived.  The king had become a “rogue king” and was leading badly.  A new option was needed, and Samuel was designated by God to recognise the right person and set change in motion.  He discovers that God has his eye on one of a number of brothers. 

The oldest brother is so impressive that Samuel is sure he has found the person.  It turns out he is wrong:  “People look at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart”.  Seven brothers later, Samuel seemed to be out of options.  So he asks the father, “Are these all the sons you have?”

Turns out there is still David (our guy).  But he hasn’t even been brought to the party because he is the youngest and most unimportant.  In fact he is out in the veld somewhere looking after the family sheep.  An outsider in his own family.  Yet he is the one God plans to use. 

God often uses the outsider, the unexpected or unrecognised person.  He is looking for people who are willing to see things differently, to see things his way.

If I am an impressive person, someone recognised as important, I need to remember this.  God is not impressed by the things our culture praises and rewards.  The truly extraordinary people are people with good hearts, people with an inner life which harmonises with the way God intends his world to be.

On the other hand, if I feel excluded; if I feel like an outsider even where I should belong, I should remember God’s focus on the inner life too.  I need not focus on trying to fit in.  I need not feel discouraged that I am an outsider.  I can do what is important: consider my heart. 

1 Samuel 16:1-13

http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=1+samuel&chapter=16

Outsider!

Here comes another set of “Outsiders” blog posts. 

I have been watching a TV series.  I am fascinated at how I love these protagonists who work outside of society, outside of the law, to help people in danger that no-one else can help.  They are helping people that no-one else will help.  They are needed because the normal helping mechanisms are insufficient.  They are needed because the entities that are supposed to help are corrupt. 

These people are doing something good, but they are hunted because they have to work outside the system.

I know that the world is full of good people.  I hope that most people are good people who try to do the right thing.  But there is this dark side to the world, and unfortunately the bad people are not always on the “other” side.  Often they are on the inside, with me. 

Sometimes that makes me feel as if I am on the outside.

That made me think about someone whose life-story is recorded in the Bible; someone who was hunted, who was forced to be an outsider for years.  I wondered what I could learn from David about being an outsider and about where God fits into life.

The story can be found in the Bible … it starts at 1Samuel 16 …
http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=1+samuel&chapter=16 

Who do we believe?

We live in a world which frequently denies spiritual life.  But many of us are aware of a transcendent dimension to life and seek to live this out.  Especially on a day like today - the great festival of one of the world religions, one of the annual commercial jamborees, or (for a few) a moment of great spiritual depth - we become aware of the dissonance between different approaches to life.   

However, there is a huge variety of “spiritualties” claiming to lead us into the way to live.  There are multiple portrayals of the invisible facet of the world, each declaring itself to be the truth.  There is a great attraction in the idea that in this aspect of life there is no true way. 

When our letter was written it was much the same.  There were many options out there for dealing with an awareness of the transcendent.  Most people did not accept that there was a single truth that mattered for spiritual life.  But our writer does think so. 

He has been writing about life which adequately reflects the spiritual dimension.  He spoke of the power needed to live this way.  Now he tells us where this power lies; in doing so he describes for us more fully who he means when he talks about “God”. 

The One who gives us the power to live this way is intimately connected to Jesus, whose life is recorded for us elsewhere.  Here the letter-writer highlights the fact that God exerted “mighty strength … when he raised Christ from the dead”.  This much is part of the visible experience of the first followers of Jesus.  (Read one of the four full records here: http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=luke&chapter=24)  There is more though.  God seats Jesus “at his right hand in the heavenly realms” which means that he is “far above” every other possible manifestation of power in the spiritual space.  In fact, it places him “over everything”, making Jesus more important even than the things we normally think of as being outside of the “”spiritual”; Jesus for our writer at least is more than relevant in every aspect of life.

Maybe that is a big ask to believe, but perhaps it is worth accepting the possibility as we continue to listen to the invitation to urban spiritual life contained in this letter.

The Bible: Ephesians 1:19-23

http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=ephesians&chapter=1

Wanting More …

In the rush of the metropolis (even a couple of thousand years ago urban life was not relaxed) we seldom pause to consider what is actually important.  As we live among the demands of city life (even two millennia ago the city was a ruthless environment) we can be so conditioned by the prevailing culture that we can’t imagine a different way of urban living.   But the writer of our letter does.

The previous sentence of this letter to the city-dwellers was a prayer that they would know God.  That may have left us a bit breathless: space for God in an aggressively human world?  Now he keeps praying for them to know more, to be enlightened. 

This is not the Western enlightenment of merciless materialism.

He wants them to find the “riches of God’s glorious inheritance in his holy people”.  The wealth that he wants for his readers is nothing to do with markets or economies; it is not about possessions or position or progress.  Rather he longs for them to discover the transcendent things that God will give them.  And, even more unlike the materialist vision, these gifts are given communally – to the collective of those who belong to God, not to individuals who somehow achieve more than others.

Nor yet is it the Eastern enlightenment of dedicated detachment.

He wants them to experience the “hope to which God has called them”.  Hope for our writer is not an unreliable wish, but the certainty of something that is coming.  This confidence-for-the-future does not originate in a cosmic mechanism of reward for those who eventually achieve the criteria.  Rather it is available to everyone, immediately.  It has nothing to do with a desire to be absorbed into the universal; it is living in confidence that God will bring about the things he has promised, and that people can participate.

Not even the Southern enlightenment of mystical manipulation.

He wants them to realise “God’s incomparably great power for those who believe”.  This is far removed from the chosen individual undergoing arduous ascetic training in order to achieve supernatural control in the unseen world.  This power is not vested in us at all; God is the one who is powerful.  However God is involved in each of our lives (great privilege!) enabling each one to live a more fruitful life, a life that matters.

Our writer is expecting that astounding things will happen in the lives of those who choose spiritual life through Jesus.  We could contemplate this sentence our whole lives and not get bored!

The Bible: Ephesians 1:18-19

http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/online-bible/?translation=niv&book=ephesians&chapter=1his level 2011-2013