Panning for Gold

When King David came to Bahurim, there came out a man of the family of the house of Saul, whose name was Shimei, the son of Gera, and as he came he cursed continually.  And he threw stones  at David and at all the servants of King David, and all the people  …  Then Abishai the son of Zeruiah said to the king, “Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and take off his head.”  

But the king said, “What have I to do with you, you sons of Zeruiah? If he is cursing because the Lord has said to him, ‘Curse David,’ who then shall say, ‘Why have you done so?’”  And David said to Abishai and to all his servants, “Behold, my own son seeks my life; how much more now may this Benjaminite! Leave him alone, and let him curse, for the Lord has told him to.  It may be that the Lord will look on the wrong done to me,  and that the Lord will repay me with good for his cursing today.” – 2 Samuel 16:5-12

I’m pretty much with the sons of Zeruiah on this one.  I would have been the guy with the sword thinking, I may not be able to fix everything, but I can good and well put that dude in his place.  David, though, is the man who shares God’s heart.  For all his faults, David is enlightened in a way that few operating under the Mosaic Covenant were.  Truly he is among the prophets. 

We could read this as looking for karma.  David had sinned.  He deserved some kind of retribution.  His son was rebelling against him.  He was going into exile, losing his position of leadership.  Shimei wrongly attributes David’s predicament to his having usurped the kingdom from Saul and being a contributor to the former king’s fall and death.  Did David then hope that he would be restored due to Shimei’s false accusation through a karmic rebound?  It kind of sounds like that. 

I think, though, David had a different understanding of God’s nature and purpose, a deeper comprehension of how the Divine works in and through the mortal and material.  Our God addresses us in many forms.   There’s a great quote from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, an exchange between the kid and the backslidden clergyman, Tobin:

I ain’t heard no voice, he said.

When it stops, said Tobin, you’ll know you’ve heard it all your life.

Abishai and Joab, the sons of David’s sister, Zeruiah, were loyal and steadfast supporters of David.  Very much like Shimei, they believed fealty was a matter of blood, family, and kinship.  David recognized the deceptive nature of appearance, of human existence.  He, however faintly and imperfectly, perceived that beyond what we think of as real lies the reality.  He knew he had heard a voice, and he knew who was talking.  He might not always understand the reasons behind it, but he recognized the source. 

Like David, we have a reason for being here on the earth at this time.  We have a mission.  For some people, their mission is straightforward and spelled out for them in bold terms.  I think of Billy Graham, Eric Liddell, Hudson Taylor, my friends living in a Muslim nation supporting and encouraging their fellow Christians there.  I think, too, of a child, conceived in sin, who saved his mother’s life while still in her womb.  Whatever else may happen and wherever he may end up, that was his first purpose for coming into the world.  I’d like to think he volunteered.

Most of us, though, have a less clear purpose.  If we are working on a building, we are doing so without blueprints, trying to lay a foundation in the dark, raising beams by feel, drilling and driving blindfolded.  We do what comes handy.  We get a job rather than pursue a career.  We live where it is convenient.  We go to a church that isn’t too far away.  We follow well-trod paths and rutted roads.  We’re working for the weekend or saving up for “retirement” when we will have absolutely no idea what to do with ourselves.  There are a myriad of older folks for whom “going to the doctor” is one of the high points of existence.  Or we become one like my wife’s aunt who used to say, when she still had her faculties, “I really like goin’ to Wal-Mart’s.” 

   

Yet, even in a world like this, we should not allow ourselves to lose hope because of appearances.  God is good.  There is none good but God.  Or, to put it another way, if you will choose to know only the good, you will always be in touch with what is true.  Only the good is real.   Like David, we must sometimes do a little sifting to get to the absolute – the Good, the Real, the True, because it seems “good” to me to help old Shimei instantly lose ten pounds of ugly fat, as the joke went. 

Interestingly, it would later be Abishai’s brother Joab that would put David back on track after the death of Absalom.  It’s proper to have a soft heart, but those around you are not always going to be able to grasp the greater reason behind your grief.  Sometimes you have to put on a happy face for the sake of those not yet able to see so deeply.

David held out hope toward Shimei as he did toward Absalom and many others.  He was always looking for the good to which they might rise no matter how low down they seemed to stand at any given moment.  We can do the same thing, especially for those closest to us.  We can speak, not to the appearance, but to Christ within them.  For, I must always remember, if Christ dwells in me, He dwells also in my idiot neighbor – when I’m not the idiot neighbor.  We all may reach the goal to which and for which we are called. 

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Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.  Only let us hold true to what we have attained. – Philippians 3:12-16 (Emphasis, mine)