I’m back, and I’ve completed both books of Samuel. They are hard ones to process. There is a lot of good and bad behavior going on. There are consequential rewards and punishments happening. My finite mind struggles with them, because sometimes it seems as if good behavior is punished and bad is rewarded. Far be it from me (they say this phrase a lot in Samuel’s day) to think I can know the mind of God. Or the motives of men.
I don’t want to go into detail about these two books. They are filled with events that are definitely not p.c. Suffice it to say that people are weird.
Moving on, the quilt block is King David’s Crown
The passage in the Bible Sampler Quilt book recounts the battle of Rabbah. David took the king’s crown right off his head, and placed it on his own. “The weight of it was a talent of gold with the precious stones.” That sounds pretty heavy to me.
The title of my post actually refers to Shakespeare, when he wrote “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” in Henry IV. I take this to mean that the worries and responsibilities that come with leadership can never be set aside, even in sleep.
But I think King David is able to do just that. For example, even when he had his faithful soldier Uriah killed in order to cover up his goings on with Bathsheba, (and the baby had to die, too) he declared that against God only had he sinned. Whaaat? And at the end of the second book of Samuel, David speaks his last words. He states that he was “blameless before God”, “kept the ways of the Lord”, was “rewarded for his righteousness” had “clean hands” and so on (22:21-25). Whaaat?
Again, far be it from me to find fault in the man that was after God’s own heart. For some reason David is favored by God even after he blows it big time. And David has the chutzpah to walk in the joy of that forgiveness as if it completely wiped away his sinful actions that caused so much pain and suffering to his innocent victims.
Yep, I’m preaching to the choir here, the choir being myself. I think the message embedded in these passages for me today is to realize where God’s favor lies. It isn’t gained by lifestyle, but by love. I am so quick to judge David by his lifestyle, especially when it comes to the women in his life. He is so not politically correct.
But God deals with the heart. He tells Saul that “To obey is better than sacrifice” when Saul keeps trying to force his way into God’s favor through action.
Unlike Saul, King David realizes that it is not what we do for God that earns us favor, it’s recognizing what God does for us.
That’s why King David can dance and sing and declare himself clean before God. He reminds me of the song, “Fields of Grace” by Big Daddy Weave:
Cuts With Scissors 