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=psalm&chapter=23
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