Now where do I know you from? <3

Doing a little check in on the Bible read through this morning. 

I am almost through 1 Samuel, and even with the rather psycho moments of Saul (literally…insane) I am finding it somewhat a refreshing read after the total crazy train of Judges. 

Since this isn’t my first rodeo of reading through the Bible in a year, plus having used many of the passages in either study or teaching over the years, you would think I wouldn’t still be noticing things…but you would be wrong. 

This is why I encourage you and everyone to read through the Bible multiple times and use different translations. 

It’s like an onion (to borrow from Shrek’s quote about ogres)…

the Bible has layers and each time you read through, God peels off another thin slice to help open our eyes. 

This time I have marked several question marks.

 One is regarding 1 Samuel 16 and then Saul’s memory lapse that happens in the next chapter.

In Chapter 16 we find the Holy Spirit has left Saul after he directly disobeys God and then lies about it.

David has already been covertly anointed by Samuel to take over the kingdom of Israel and is back tending his father’s sheep with oil still dripping from his hair. 

Saul is struggling with his own demons and someone recommends maybe music would help lift his mood. One of servants just happens to know a guy…named David…who tends sheep but plays a mean lyre. 

He is brought to the palace and according to verse 21, Saul “loved him very much” …. so much that not only does he become Saul’s personal Pandora station, but he also makes David his armor bearer. 

All I can surmise is that David is one of several armor bearers because a few short verses later, in Chapter 17, we find Saul and his army, which includes David’s older brothers, on the front lines of battle with the Philistines. 

David is back tending the sheep and his father sends him to take food to the brothers and see how they are doing.

This is the famous David and Goliath story, but it is intriguing to me that when David decides this foul-mouthed giant needs to go down, he is brought to Saul. 

Saul converses with him, offers David his own suit of armor…watches as David slays the enemy of Israel with a sling shot wearing only his shepherd’s garb and then asks…Whose son are you? 

What?

Wouldn’t you think Saul might recognize the guy who had been in his living room playing the lyre? The one who he loved and made an armor bearer?

Is this an inconsistency in Scripture?

I know it is not. 

It is an opportunity for me to ask God what He is trying to tell me in these passages and as I pray and think about it, I jot down my thoughts. 

One thought is that we are getting a glimpse into the unstable mind of Saul without the Holy Spirit. As I look at other passages about Saul, I can see a self-focused, egotistical man who put his own needs before everyone else including his family, his army, the nation of Israel and God. 

I also think of people I have met over the years who no matter how many times I am around them introduce themselves to me and are always glad to meet me.

Sometimes I threaten to eventually ask them if they are as glad to meet me this time as they were the last time or is this time better. 

But with that being said, I am guilty of forgetting I have met people too. 

I happen to be married to a man who rarely forgets a name and never forgets a face. 

I have sadly been known to forget both. 

He teaches me a lot, that husband of mine, about using people’s names when I meet them and asking questions to get to know who they are and then remembering them. It means being other-focused instead of self-focused. 

We are wired differently, he and I, and this comes more naturally to him. But I am not off the hook. 

People matter to God and so I have to make a concentrated effort to shift my myopic vision off of my little corner of the world and really see people…appreciate them as humans made in God’s image…and commit to remember names and some details for future meet-ups. 

So that is just one take-away from my daily reading this week.

How about you, my fellow sojourners?

Where are you in your read through?

Share something that is speaking to you with someone you meet today…spread the Word…it is so much more interesting than the current buzz of hand sanitizer shortages. Just sayin….