In the midst of a time of great distress it is said of David in 1 Samuel 30:6, "But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” David and his company of six hundred men had been off serving in the military of Kind Achish of Gath, (where the enemies of Israel, the Philistines, lived) and in the process had left their wives and children in Ziklag unprotected. A raiding band of Amalekites the persistent and longtime enemies of Israel, came down on the village, capturing the women and children for slaves, looting the place and carried of everything of value, leaving behind nothing but a smoking pile of rubble.
“Now it happened, when David and his men came to Ziklag, on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the South and Ziklag, attacked Ziklag and burned it with fire, (2) and had taken captive the women and those who were there, from small to great; they did not kill anyone, but carried them away and went their way. (3) So David and his men came to the city, and there it was, burned with fire; and their wives, their sons, and their daughters had been taken captive.” When David and his men arrived home all that remained was heap of smoking ruins. Everything was gone; wives, children, cattle and all their property. What do you do when life falls apart? Many follow the adage, “When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles and scream and shout!”
It is interesting to note how David’s men reacted when they discovered their terrible loss. Verse four, “Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept, until they had no more power to weep.’
Some of them sat down and wept until they has no more tears to shed. But others complained and blamed David. Verse six,
“Now David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and his daughters….” Some went so far as to suggest that they stone David. It is always easy in a crisis to blame somebody else or to look for a scapegoat.
A lot of times when our life gets hairy we are tempted to do what David’s troops did. We are tempted to take it out on someone else. Misery loves company. When we are in the pit of despair and instead of spending time with God and asking Him what to do we do the stupid thing. We are hurting so we hurt someone else. Hurt people hurt people.
It is very possible that God intended that a crisis be allowed in David’s life that would force him to seek some answers from the Lord Himself. David had a choice. He could either, as a great many of us do, just stand there and continue to look, and see nothing but the disaster or he could look beyond them and see God. David looked to the Lord and he met God and found the strength and direction to carry one. Then verse six continues with “…But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.”
It is now, here in the book of 1 Samuel 30:6 we find one of the most eloquent “but's” in the Bible. David had lost just as much as any of the rest of the men. David’s only worldly possession at that moment was the clothes he wore. Everything else was gone; his property was carried off by raiders, his home was a mass of smoldering embers. But there was one thing that the Amalekites had not and could not take from him, they could not take his relationship with the Living Lord.
Alexander
Maclaren states it this way, “Whatever else we lose, as long as we have Him we
are rich; and whatever else we possess, we are poor as long as we do not have
Him. God is enough; whatever else may go.”
In
Christ,
Brown
"May God, who sees
all things, and who is the Ruler of all spirits and the Lord of all flesh - who
chose our Lord Jesus Christ and us through Him to be a peculiar people - grant
to every soul that calls upon His glorious and holy Name, faith, peace,
patience, long-suffering, self-control, purity, and sobriety, to the
well-pleasing of His Name, through our High Priest and Protector, Jesus Christ,
by whom be to Him glory, and majesty, and power, and honor, both now and
forevermore". AMEN.
- Clement of Rome
- Clement of Rome
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