Daily Manna 08-Aug-2016

Topic: Safety is of the Lord 18

Reading: 1Sam 23:7-14, 1Sam 18

Scripture: And it was told Saul that David was come to Keilah. And Saul said, God hath delivered him into my hand; for he is shut in, by entering into a town that hath gates and bars. (1Sam 23:7)

Note: Little did David know or suspect that he could be a possible target for the wrath of Saul soon after killing Goliath. David heard the women alright when they sang those troublesome lyrics in recognition for his awesome triumph that was to turn him into a virtual fugitive for well over a decade, away from the murderous obsession of Saul.

The lyrics were clear, very much in recognition and favour of David for putting to sleep the enemy of Israel. The political ambience was very much coloured with the euphoria of the shocking but pleasant victory over Goliath. Nothing else mattered and no one could do wrong in Israel during the euphoria, looking through the lenses of the political neophyte, David. Being politically uninitiated, David was ignorantly basking in the joy of the Goliath victory, still in dreamland in his happy-go-lucky mood, yet to be awakened to the political implications of the lyrics that were being sung by the women.

Unknown to David, the political antenna of the king had intercepted troubling signals from the lyrics pointing to high treason. Alarms were sounding all in the direction of David. The women who sang those troubling lyrics didn’t know anything about the conspiracy to commit high treason. Neither was the chief suspect, David, remotely aware of the suspected conspiracy. Envy and jealousy in combination with insecurity and inferiority complex had combined to turn Saul into a suspicion freak, without basis in material evidence and consideration to the mood of the nation.

A double assassination attempt on David’s life by Saul, all at a time that he was ministering on the lyre to the troubled king, awakened David from his political slumber to the intricacies and dangers of life lived closely to the throne. If David ever needed hard lessons from the murky world of politics, he just received them in the palace, missing death by a whisker. David’s usefulness to Saul in calming the king’s demonic oppression with his skill on the lyre and his immediate past accomplishment in wiping out the menace of Goliath, all counted for nothing within a space of sudden burst of anger from the king, leaving him with no other option than to run for his life.

Food for thought: The vicious nature of political convenience, leaves no room for morality, tolerance, logic or commonsense.

Declaration: Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men. (1Cor 14:20)

©Author: Rev Fred Aboe