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