I wonder

Do you ever get really curious about things while reading the Bible?  Because sometimes when I read, and especially the Old Testament when the stuff that happens is mostly drama-full (I'm in 2 Thessalonians right now, and as much as I love Paul's stuff, it doesn't have quite the same flavor as in the time of the Kings and such), I have questions that aren't important, but that I'm looking forward to having answered in Heaven one day.

For instance, does anyone else wonder what happened to Goliath's sword?  In 1 Samuel 21:9 it was given to David to protect against Saul (again) and we know the results of that: Saul had the priests killed.  But what happened to it after that?  One might assume that a weapon of such size might be slightly difficult to conceal.  But (as far as I remember, anyhow) it's not mentioned again in the Bible, leading one to assume that it just disappeared somewhere.  Maybe beaten into a plowshare at some point or something, haha.  But it's always been curious to me.

Speaking of, in the next chapter it talks about David going to the King of Moab to help hide his parents.  All good and well, we know David did a lot of weird things to prevent being killed off by Saul, but when he went to Moab was it with a specific purpose?  Because when you hark back to the story of Ruth and Boaz, you see that Jesse was actually their grandson, making David a great-grandson to a Maobitess.  But that's what I wonder:  did the king of Moab know that when David brought Jesse and the Mrs. to him for protection?  Did he partially do it because they were kind of related to his country?  Or did he just like the whole political intrigue of hiding high-profile parents?  

Those are just two examples.

I totally can't wait for Heaven.

The Waiting Game

We play many games. Twister. Dating. Monopoly. Some games we like (Guess Who?, Scrabble, Bejeweled) and some we don't (... Monopoly and dating are two that come immediately to mind). And a lot of parts of life we refer to as games that probably aren't (for instance, dating. Not really a game. I just get tired of what I call "the dating game" amongst youngsters who treat it carelessly, hence the less-than-fuzzy feelings I'm feeling towards it right now), like, for instance, waiting.

We all wait for this or that. Some people wait for the mail, some people wait for a kind word, some wait for a grandchild, and some wait for the eyebrows to grow back. All kinds of things. But I was thinking about waiting last night, as I was listening to Air1 (they have some crazy songs, but I like them mostly). They played a song called "For Those Who Wait" and it's by a band called Fireflight. Now, I'm not wholly certain what the song is about (though it did have words about a "waiting game" which is why I'm suddenly calling waiting a game), but I think it mostly has to do with waiting on the Lord. I think. I don't know. I was driving, and sometimes I pay attention to the road instead of the music. Weird, I know.

Anyhow, the bridge of the song went along the lines of "the pressures make us stronger, the lessons make the difference, the struggle makes us hunger." Something. I guess I could look up the lyrics. No, I'm feeling lazy.

As much as we don't want to wait, it's so helpful for us to wait. And there are so many helpful, and healthy things we can do while waiting (again, this waiting is for anything, be it the pizza delivery guy, that upcoming concert, or for your passport to come). And I think that's the way it was designed to be.

Do you remember the story where Saul was waiting for Samuel to come, but he didn't show up for a whole week, so Saul just sort of up and did some sacrifices, and then when Samuel came (like five minutes later, of course), he confronted Saul about he'd stepped out of bounds and done the sacrifices himself. Well, Saul's answer was that he felt obliged to for a bunch of reasons (the bad guys would get him, the people were scattering), so he just did it.

Please note, I am not an exact translation. Thank you.

So anyhow, Saul just didn't want to wait. So he didn't. And I don't blame him, in a certain sense. I mean, how many of us would just wait patiently for an entire week?! If someone says they'll be at the bus station on Friday, I'm not just going to sit around and wait for him for a whole week, you know? I'd be those people, scattering, and I'd probably be Saul, just taking charge and doing the sacrifices for lack of someone better to do them.

Woe is me. What a terrible attitude! They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary, they shall walk, and not faint.

If you want a list of verses about waiting, see Mrs. B's blog for a very good post on the subject.

There's another song (I'm really into this song thing today, hope that doesn't bother anybody) by John Waller called "While I'm Waiting" and it was used in the Fireproof soundtrack (great movie, great soundtrack) and I love listening to it. It just brings to mind that while we're waiting, we should be hopeful, and serving, and patient. "I'm waiting on you, Lord, though it is painful, I will wait."

That's the sort of attitude with which I want to wait.

Obey

A few weeks ago my family was having a picnic and I had my parents give us kids some "life advice." I just figured that it would be interesting to hear specifics; we see how they live, but I wanted to hear why they decided to live the way they do. It sparked (obviously) some interesting discussions, and then I sort of forgot about it.

But last night our family went out to eat in celebration of two major events (moving here and my dad buying his business) that actually happened in September, but we always forget about it until later in the fall. So yes, it's October, and we're finally celebrating our Family Day of Awesomeness. Or whatever it's called.

So, while we were sitting around, waiting for the food (most specifically, the rolls, which they forgot to give us, and we were all pretty hungry for them, sigh) I thought it would be fun to get some advice from the other side of the family. My little sister (she'll always be my little sister, no matter how old she gets!) is nearly 16 (see? not exactly little any longer), so I asked her to give all of us some life advice. By the time I was her age I thought I had a pretty good handle on things (little did I know...) and thought it would be interesting to get her take on the subject.

She thought for a few minutes, and then came out with one of the wisest things I've heard in a long time. "Disobedience is never worth it." That was all. She just said it as if, well, of course, life advice was her speciality.

Yeah, I wasn't that smart when I was 15.

But it made me think of the verse in 1 Samuel 15, that says that "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." Then it continues about rebellion being as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry (those verses used to strike a great deal of fear into my young heart, especially as I was wont to be rather stubborn), but I was mostly thinking about the obedience part of the verse.

You know, Saul really thought (so it appears) he was doing the right thing in the chapter--he sacrificed to the Lord from the best of the flocks and such. What's so bad about that? Well, nothing, unless the Lord had asked that you, you know, obey Him specifically. And this was the incident where Saul spared Agag, and later, of course, Haman the Agagite tried to destroy the Jewish race, which didn't work out so well for him, but this is off-topic. Go read Esther in case you need to brush up on how unfortunate the whole sparing-of-Agag situation was.

Where was I?

Ah, yes. So Saul did something that, in and of itself, wasn't bad, but certainly had negative consequences. And I can think of so many choices I've made in life (this is depressing: if I've already done so many wrong things and I'm not even a quarter of a century old, how much opportunity will there be in my life for wrongs to be committed? Ugh) where it wasn't as if I were doing something "wrong" per se, but I knew the difference. There are things that leave a sharp bitter taste in your mouth, and you know you don't have peace. Thankfully, I rarely end up losing my kingdom because of it (of course, I don't have a kingdom to lose. Note to self: find a kingdom) but there are still consequences.

So, maybe if I'd asked my sister a few years ago for life advice, I would have been less biscuit-y in some of my choices.

Maybe I need a shirt that says "Obedience is better." On the back it could say stuff about sacrifice or fat of rams, but I'm not sure that people would understand it. The "Obedience is Better" tagline makes sense in and of itself.

Like John H Sammis always said, "Trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey!"

Saul & Co.

There are some stories in the Bible that just make me sad. Anything to do with Tamar (either one, really), stuff about eating children, etc. But our family was just reading about the time there was a famine in the land, and it was because the Gibeonites were feeling upset because of the whole Saul thing (for a more complete rendering, please read 2 Samuel 21).

Anyhow, long story short, David up and killed a ton of descendants of Saul, just to make the Gibeonites happy. I think it's nice that the famine stopped, but seriously, at such a cost? That story just hurts me to read. Not to mention that it's not long after the whole Absalom story, which breaks my heart every time. Regardless, I'm discussing David and Saul.

I just find that whole Old Testament thing so hard to swallow sometimes. I mean, really, they had to kill those dudes to stop the famine? Wasn't there something else they could have done? Couldn't they have sent them some gift certificates to Camels, Ltd. or something? And when you think about Rizpa, the unfortunate concubine of Saul whose two sons were killed and left out to rot in the sun, you realize what a cruel situation it was.

Of course, I always wonder about Michal in all of this. Did she care about any of these going's-on? You'd better believe she was keenly aware of the fact that her sons with her ex-husband Adriel were being strung up by her current slash also-ex-husband David. How could she not? But did she care about Rizpa's sons? Did she care that Mephibosheth was living in the city, maybe even not too far from where she lived? I wish there was some way we could get a peek into the lives of the minoresque characters in the Bible. The dynamic between Michal and David is fascinating to me, and I often wonder if Michal, Jonathan, and David hung out, back in the day, when David was still just that kid who played the harp part-time for Saul. I know family dynamics these days aren't quite what they were back in the OT times, but still, the sense of family is pretty important, I think, no matter what era you're living in.

So the moral of the story is simply that the whole situation with David and Saul's kin makes me sad. Mephibosheth got a pretty good deal, but nobody else seemed to end up too happily. So much for the life of royalty, eh?