Ever feel like Job? You know, like you’ve done the best you can with everything you have, like you’ve been faithful and obedient to God, and everything seems to fall apart anyway? And, on top of that, God doesn’t seem interested in intervening—or even answering—when you need him? I know I do, sometimes, and it’s one of the most difficult circumstances to deal with as a person of faith. It’s not hard to begin even to question whether God is paying any attention to what’s going on at all. I wonder if David felt this way, particularly in the exile from Israel he and his men have been enduring in the last few chapters we’ve read. 

 

Sure, David’s made some mistakes that we’ve been able to notice with the benefit of hindsight. But, I bet to him it felt as if he was doing the very best he could: his profession of dedication to God’s anointing of Saul was genuine, and he went into exile instead of challenging Saul directly. It was his need to provide for his troops that drove him into the arms of the Philistines. Likely he wasn’t happy about everything that was going on, but judging from the courses he has taken (the deception of Achish in ch. 27, for example), he was intent on continuing to be a friend to God’s people. 

 

In light of this, it looks to me like the prospect of his Philistine overlord going to battle against Israel must have been David’s worst nightmare come true. He couldn’t desert and go back to Israel (so as to fight with them in the battle against the Philistines), given Saul’s bipolar nature towards him (not to mention the wrath of Achish that would doubtless follow a betrayal), but neither could he conscience bringing death to his own people. The text doesn’t say whether David called out to God, but, given his history and the quality of the relationship we have seen between them, it seems fair to assume he must have. 

 

The writer never explicitly spells out God’s role in the drama, but I think it’s fair to say that we readers are supposed to conclude that he was arranging events to rescue David from the impossible catch-22 he found himself in. Like with many of the other historical books in the Old Testament, the assumption that God’s hand is invisibly at work behind the scenes is the foundation for 1 Samuel. I wonder if David ever even saw what was going on. In today’s passage, at least, he never seems to get it: he plays dumb, continuing the charade he began in ch. 27 by pretending to be offended, rather than simply going back to Philistia without complaint (as I would expect him to do if he understood what God was doing). 

 

I think that probably I fault God for not doing anything in situations like this way too much. When it comes down to it, I guess, my outlook on life is too narrow-focused: I implicitly take for granted that if I can’t tell what God’s doing, he’s not doing it. But this passage reveals that lie for what it is: God does work in the background, even if his servants never notice. For one thing, that’s good news for me – I stumble through life pretty distracted most of the time, and the fact that God doesn’t wait for me to be watching to work things together for good is a relief. But even more, it occurs to me that the evidence of God’s work must be everywhere, just beneath the surface of the circumstances around me, if only I’ll take the time to look for it. And I bet I’d be a quite different sort of follower if I did notice God at work on a regular basis. I think that in the next few days (and weeks, and months) I’m going to do my best to correct that. What kind of church do you think we’d be if we were all looking for—and appreciating—the work God’s doing behind the scenes in all of our lives? I’m looking forward to finding out. 

 

Your fellow traveler, 

 

Jeremy