The Mundane of Life

Some days it's just hard to get going. We are in a stretch where the warm, summer days are long gone and yet the excitement and fun of the Christmas holidays seem like they will never get here. Life can seem boring, and instead of living for today, we find ourselves living from big event to big event. There's no doubt that David experienced these boring, mundane days. In fact, it was during these types of days that David had one of the highest points in his life, as well as one of the lowest.

THE GOOD

When Samuel was led by God to the house of Jesse to anoint the next king of Israel, he met with what he thought was all of Jesse's sons. When God told him that none of those sons of Jesse were the next king, "Samuel asked, 'Are these all the sons you have?' 'There is still the youngest,' Jesse replied. 'But he's out in the fields watching the sheep and goats.'" (1 Samuel 16:11, emphasis mine) The Hebrew word for "watching" in that sentence is "ro'eh", which means caring for a flock of sheep or similar animals, leading the flock to pasture, giving care to individual sheep, and defending them from predators. I'm no shepherd, and I have no doubt that being a shepherd was and is an incredibly difficult, laborious job. But, I'm also sure that there were times that David got bored in the day-to-day routine of being a shepherd. I mean, he was watching sheep and goats for crying out loud! Yet God didn't anoint him after he slain Goliath, or after he killed thousands of enemies in a mighty battle. It was in David's daily routine of shepherding where God led Samuel to David, and David was anointed king.

THE BAD

It was also in the mundane of life where David committed a terrible sin. "In the spring of the year, when kings normally go out to war, David sent...the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites. However, David stayed behind in Jerusalem. Late one afternoon, after his midday rest, David got out of bed and was walking on the roof of the palace. As he looked out over the city, he noticed a woman of unusual beauty taking a bath. He sent someone to find out who she was, and he was told, 'She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.' Then David sent messengers to get her; and when she came to the palace, he slept with her." (2 Samuel 11:1-4, emphasis mine) Obviously, the sin of David committing adultery with Bathsheba is the part that is focused on the most in the passage. But, the part that caught my attention was that for some reason, David was not with his troops in battle like he should have been. An insert in the NLT notes that "this is the first mention of a leader of Israel staying off the battlefield in a time of war." Scripture doesn't say why David didn't go to war. All we know is that he was not in his normal routine as king. If he had been, he never would have even seen Bathsheba to be tempted to sleep with her. A boring, ho-hum spring day when David got up from his nap turned into disaster.

The point is, God works in these mundane, ho-hum, day-to-day routines of His people all throughout scripture. Moses "was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro," (Exodus 3:1) when God called him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Simon Peter and Andrew were "throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living" when "Jesus called out to them, "Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!" (Matthew 4:18,19) There are numerous other examples, too. We can choose to use these days as a chance to grow closer in our relationship with Christ, or they can lull us to sleep spiritually. As the daylight gets shorter, the weather turns colder, and those mundane days get...mundanier?...don't lose hope!

Lamentations 3:21-24 "Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, 'The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!'"

I Just Can't Wait to be King

I've been reading through 1 and 2 Samuel lately, and I'm learning things about King David that I never knew or even thought of. Of course, everyone knows of his showdown and defeat of Goliath, and I would say that most know he was anointed as king when he was only a young boy. One thing I never gave much thought to the amount of time that David had to wait between being anointed as the next king by Samuel (1 Samuel 16) and when he actually began his reign as king. While we don't know exactly how old David was when he was anointed by Samuel, most commentaries suggest he was a teenager. We do know that "David was thirty years old when he began to reign" (2 Samuel 5:4) over Judah, and seven years later began to reign over all of Israel.

The point is that David had to wait for a number of years on God to fulfill His promise. Not only did he have to wait, he had to endure times when he thought his life would come to an end. Jealousy caused King Saul to hurl a spear at David, "intending to pin him to the wall. But David escaped him twice." (1 Samuel 18:11) In fact, the last 13 chapters of 1 Samuel recount David constantly fleeing and escaping from Saul, living a life of a fugitive. But surely David, a man after God's own heart, would never doubt that God would fulfill His promise of David becoming king, would he? 1 Samuel 27:1 says, "But David kept thinking to himself, 'Someday Saul is going to get me.'" David was human, and when you have spears being thrown at you by the current king, and you are forced to live in caves to escape his desire to kill you, doubts can tend to creep in about God keeping his promise.

Despite any doubts and fears David may have had, he waited on God's timing. Scripture gives numerous examples of this. David actually had Saul's life in his hands on two different occasions (1 Samuel 24 & 26), but both times he refused to kill Saul since Saul was God's anointed king for that time, no matter how sinful his actions were. When Saul was killed in battle, David sincerely mourned his death and killed the man who took credit for ending Saul's life (2 Samuel 1).

We live in a society of instant gratification. The idea of waiting on anything is so far removed from my generation. We get fidgety waiting a few minutes in the fast food line, or we complain that our high-speed internet is too slow, and heaven forbid we wait a few days to buy the newest iPad or video game...people spend the night in front of the store so they can be the first one to buy it OMG RIGHT NOW!!! This is what God tells us through David in Psalm 27:14, "Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord." It is not always easy to wait patiently on God. It takes bravery, and it takes courage. Maybe we're not promised an earthly kingdom as David was, but one day we will be with the King of Kings in His eternal kingdom. On a side note, what can we do to help us as we wait on God? David gives us a practical answer in that same Psalm. "My heart has heard you say, 'Come and talk with me.' And my heart responds, 'Lord, I am coming.'" (Psalm 27:8)