2 Samuel 10 – Watchcare Over Message and Messenger
I'm working through the Bible's book of Acts with my friend Curtis, and our weekly encounters over that text are a highlight. They are splendid from the angle that God has given us His Word and has given me a particular love for the book of Acts as He continues to display His glory after Christ ascends to Heaven. But these encounters are also splendid for more individual reasons.
They are, in turn, a miniature book of Acts in my own life. I recently had my work hours reduced, and many of the hours I do work are from home. In a sense, I'm experiencing the gradual closing of one chapter with its loss of something like prestige and its diminishing opportunities for connection.
By God's grace, though, He is closing out my excuses along with what can seem, humanly speaking, like lost opportunities. I know longer can say with any sincerity that I don't have time to reach out to people on the periphery of my social circle, to ask the extra question, or to offer to help to the extent that my body with cerebral palsy will let me. He is, as you will see, challenging me to offer more of myself and of the Gospel action in the strangeness and ordinariness of my sphere.
This reenacting of Acts in my life is why I got to ask about the question behind the question. It's why, in God's gracious sovereignty, Curtis is weekly sitting at my kitchen table as a friend, increasingly in more than the social media sense. In a previous job, Curtis overcame his quiet nature and asked me directly if I wanted to study the Bible with him over lunch. We did so a few times, but I did not know Curtis well when he braved the honesty recently to ask me a question about a verse I posted on Facebook.
I tried to answer the question in the moment, but I also sensed a relational opportunity as my usual excuses for crowding out deeper relationship are disabled. I overcame the 21st century's electronic threshold and asked him if he wanted to have a meal and study the Bible together face-to-face. Cerebral palsy doesn't allow me to drive, so Curtis has been willing to literally come the extra mile and drive 30 or 45 minutes weekly to discuss God's Word with me.
In itself, that's worth posting as a confirmation of the efficacy of the Word and of God's continuing Presence in "lesser" chapters of our lives, but last night both of these were particularly evident. As my wife had the opportunity to support a sister who was teaching the Bible out of town, Curtis and I progressed to a dinner date because he was, again, willing to be flexible and put his own convenience second. Our text in Acts was mine in yesterday's blog as I often rehearse and crystallize my thinking in writing, Act 1:8-11.
One of the aspects of the Truth I felt led to bring out was the progress of Christ's message from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the Earth. I confessed to a love for continuity which can harden into idolatry. In plainer language, I look for total success in Jerusalem, in the closest aspects of application, before I am willing to take the show on the road and testify to God's goodness more broadly.
To a point, this is wisdom. Our closest relationships are often the proving ground of Truth, or as Amy Layne Litzelman has written, the place where empty religion is exposed. David developed skills and courage with his sheep, then with the two and half tribes of his native Judah, and only then did God see fit to crown him over all of Israel.
Yet, this is also a ready-made excuse. If I pause or preclude every time I find flaws in me, I am actually making myself god over the spread of my impact in place of the real God Who is sovereign over the timing and focus. I pledged at the table with Curtis as both my witness and evidence to look wider, to recognize that, by grace, God can use me in Judea, and Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of the Earth even while my most immediate Jerusalem impact is subject to His inspection and ongoing reconstruction.
I felt the Spirit's Presence around us. Making ourselves subject together to His Word has proven an amazingly intimate infrastructure for the building of a human-to-human relationship, whereas before I have been prone to quote or exposit order to keep from talking honestly about me. Over the verses we were considering, I learned from Curtis's soft and disciplined words the specifics about how God has used the personality in Curtis's life to shape him as a man of faith. As I learned about God in and through Curtis, I felt His pleasure in and through me.
We parted with that sense of confirmation in spirit. For a moment, I knew I was here for such a time as this. I knew the purpose of this season and the peace and power of being Christ's instrument. If I had a moment to wonder what it would be like for this sense to pervade one's entire life, it was just a moment. As I rolled Curtis to the door, my uncooperative body reasserted itself, subtly at first. I remember having the conscious thought as to whether I had time to lock the door behind him and turn off the light in the hallway.
I had to go to the bathroom. As with all aspects of my life with cerebral palsy, this takes longer. If there was any impulse toward this before, it was sublimated by how much joy and completeness I felt in my role as conduit of the Word. Of course, there is both peace and pride in this, and I will leave Christ to judge His servant as to how much of each was in my heart. It's possible I ignored some early warnings, but the one I responded to now was a modest and manageable two or three on a scale of 10.
Somehow we moved from two or three to an urgent seven or eight within seconds. True to my peculiar form, as my wheelchair tires squealed with a quick turn toward relief, the word nerd in me wondered if this was what my doctor meant by neurogenic bladder which is a factor for many people with CP.
Word thought. DANGER! Word thought. DANGER! The order from my brain to extremities was more garbled it usually is by urgency and muscle tension. Too late. Mess. Anger. Shame.
Prophet?! You?! And a few minutes ago?! Moses' afterglow over. 90, or 120, or 150 minutes that was to be devoted to my introverted haven of quiet reading would now be used for more everyday purposes. Cleanup on aisle Brian! Plus, cleanup on aisle Brian would leave a lot for Brian's wife to do when she got home with her own afterglow at 11:30. DRAT!
And yet, the barrier I erect between the Gospel portion of my evening and the not-so-good news is semipermeable. God is good in both. He expressed His goodness through my wife's gracious cleanup and late-night laundry. He also expresses His goodness between the same Bible covers which typically contain my most notable triumphs.
When the Spirit offered me comfort with the reality that Christ's strength is made manifest in my weakness, I at first rebuffed it. My bruised ego allowed for the specious logic that a verse often quoted is like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and somehow loses its original potency. This narrative creature needed a story to replace the one currently on a drudgerous mental loop. He obliged.
In 2 Samuel 10 and 1 Chronicles 19, King David asks messengers to represent him in delivering comfort to another king who has just lost his father. I can imagine them imbued with important purpose, much as I felt in the earlier portion of my evening declaring the authority of the King of Kings. Their mission took a turn for the humiliating, too. King Huan was so suspicious of David's intentions that he had the messengers mistreated. He had half their beards shaved and have their robes sheared at the buttocks.
David's next move was a picture of Christ in my descent from significance to shame. It's part of the reason why I'm glad to share the whole trajectory, because we can't really convince people Christ understands and is greater than our shame if we don't admit that we deal with shame in the first place. David's next move, before dealing with the affront to his own honor and the geopolitics, is to offer specific comfort to his messengers. They are more than instruments to deliver his words.
So am I, so are we, in the eyes of Jesus, the Son of David. Yes, as Curtis and I studied, Christ has given us important work to deliver His Word around the world. We shan't forget, though, that His watchcare over us in detail often too ordinary or humiliating to report, is also part of that testimony. He Who holds the planets, who moves hearts from death to life at the initial reception of the Gospel, also cares for the hidden moments of His messengers.
Mark Batterson stretches the scope of our theology appropriately. Keeping in mind that God's purview extends to the uttermost parts of the earth, and beyond, Batterson measures, "God is not just great because nothing is too big for Him." Batterson applies, "God is great because nothing is too small for Him, either."
They are, in turn, a miniature book of Acts in my own life. I recently had my work hours reduced, and many of the hours I do work are from home. In a sense, I'm experiencing the gradual closing of one chapter with its loss of something like prestige and its diminishing opportunities for connection.
By God's grace, though, He is closing out my excuses along with what can seem, humanly speaking, like lost opportunities. I know longer can say with any sincerity that I don't have time to reach out to people on the periphery of my social circle, to ask the extra question, or to offer to help to the extent that my body with cerebral palsy will let me. He is, as you will see, challenging me to offer more of myself and of the Gospel action in the strangeness and ordinariness of my sphere.
This reenacting of Acts in my life is why I got to ask about the question behind the question. It's why, in God's gracious sovereignty, Curtis is weekly sitting at my kitchen table as a friend, increasingly in more than the social media sense. In a previous job, Curtis overcame his quiet nature and asked me directly if I wanted to study the Bible with him over lunch. We did so a few times, but I did not know Curtis well when he braved the honesty recently to ask me a question about a verse I posted on Facebook.
I tried to answer the question in the moment, but I also sensed a relational opportunity as my usual excuses for crowding out deeper relationship are disabled. I overcame the 21st century's electronic threshold and asked him if he wanted to have a meal and study the Bible together face-to-face. Cerebral palsy doesn't allow me to drive, so Curtis has been willing to literally come the extra mile and drive 30 or 45 minutes weekly to discuss God's Word with me.
In itself, that's worth posting as a confirmation of the efficacy of the Word and of God's continuing Presence in "lesser" chapters of our lives, but last night both of these were particularly evident. As my wife had the opportunity to support a sister who was teaching the Bible out of town, Curtis and I progressed to a dinner date because he was, again, willing to be flexible and put his own convenience second. Our text in Acts was mine in yesterday's blog as I often rehearse and crystallize my thinking in writing, Act 1:8-11.
One of the aspects of the Truth I felt led to bring out was the progress of Christ's message from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the Earth. I confessed to a love for continuity which can harden into idolatry. In plainer language, I look for total success in Jerusalem, in the closest aspects of application, before I am willing to take the show on the road and testify to God's goodness more broadly.
To a point, this is wisdom. Our closest relationships are often the proving ground of Truth, or as Amy Layne Litzelman has written, the place where empty religion is exposed. David developed skills and courage with his sheep, then with the two and half tribes of his native Judah, and only then did God see fit to crown him over all of Israel.
Yet, this is also a ready-made excuse. If I pause or preclude every time I find flaws in me, I am actually making myself god over the spread of my impact in place of the real God Who is sovereign over the timing and focus. I pledged at the table with Curtis as both my witness and evidence to look wider, to recognize that, by grace, God can use me in Judea, and Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of the Earth even while my most immediate Jerusalem impact is subject to His inspection and ongoing reconstruction.
I felt the Spirit's Presence around us. Making ourselves subject together to His Word has proven an amazingly intimate infrastructure for the building of a human-to-human relationship, whereas before I have been prone to quote or exposit order to keep from talking honestly about me. Over the verses we were considering, I learned from Curtis's soft and disciplined words the specifics about how God has used the personality in Curtis's life to shape him as a man of faith. As I learned about God in and through Curtis, I felt His pleasure in and through me.
We parted with that sense of confirmation in spirit. For a moment, I knew I was here for such a time as this. I knew the purpose of this season and the peace and power of being Christ's instrument. If I had a moment to wonder what it would be like for this sense to pervade one's entire life, it was just a moment. As I rolled Curtis to the door, my uncooperative body reasserted itself, subtly at first. I remember having the conscious thought as to whether I had time to lock the door behind him and turn off the light in the hallway.
I had to go to the bathroom. As with all aspects of my life with cerebral palsy, this takes longer. If there was any impulse toward this before, it was sublimated by how much joy and completeness I felt in my role as conduit of the Word. Of course, there is both peace and pride in this, and I will leave Christ to judge His servant as to how much of each was in my heart. It's possible I ignored some early warnings, but the one I responded to now was a modest and manageable two or three on a scale of 10.
Somehow we moved from two or three to an urgent seven or eight within seconds. True to my peculiar form, as my wheelchair tires squealed with a quick turn toward relief, the word nerd in me wondered if this was what my doctor meant by neurogenic bladder which is a factor for many people with CP.
Word thought. DANGER! Word thought. DANGER! The order from my brain to extremities was more garbled it usually is by urgency and muscle tension. Too late. Mess. Anger. Shame.
Prophet?! You?! And a few minutes ago?! Moses' afterglow over. 90, or 120, or 150 minutes that was to be devoted to my introverted haven of quiet reading would now be used for more everyday purposes. Cleanup on aisle Brian! Plus, cleanup on aisle Brian would leave a lot for Brian's wife to do when she got home with her own afterglow at 11:30. DRAT!
And yet, the barrier I erect between the Gospel portion of my evening and the not-so-good news is semipermeable. God is good in both. He expressed His goodness through my wife's gracious cleanup and late-night laundry. He also expresses His goodness between the same Bible covers which typically contain my most notable triumphs.
When the Spirit offered me comfort with the reality that Christ's strength is made manifest in my weakness, I at first rebuffed it. My bruised ego allowed for the specious logic that a verse often quoted is like a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and somehow loses its original potency. This narrative creature needed a story to replace the one currently on a drudgerous mental loop. He obliged.
In 2 Samuel 10 and 1 Chronicles 19, King David asks messengers to represent him in delivering comfort to another king who has just lost his father. I can imagine them imbued with important purpose, much as I felt in the earlier portion of my evening declaring the authority of the King of Kings. Their mission took a turn for the humiliating, too. King Huan was so suspicious of David's intentions that he had the messengers mistreated. He had half their beards shaved and have their robes sheared at the buttocks.
David's next move was a picture of Christ in my descent from significance to shame. It's part of the reason why I'm glad to share the whole trajectory, because we can't really convince people Christ understands and is greater than our shame if we don't admit that we deal with shame in the first place. David's next move, before dealing with the affront to his own honor and the geopolitics, is to offer specific comfort to his messengers. They are more than instruments to deliver his words.
So am I, so are we, in the eyes of Jesus, the Son of David. Yes, as Curtis and I studied, Christ has given us important work to deliver His Word around the world. We shan't forget, though, that His watchcare over us in detail often too ordinary or humiliating to report, is also part of that testimony. He Who holds the planets, who moves hearts from death to life at the initial reception of the Gospel, also cares for the hidden moments of His messengers.
Mark Batterson stretches the scope of our theology appropriately. Keeping in mind that God's purview extends to the uttermost parts of the earth, and beyond, Batterson measures, "God is not just great because nothing is too big for Him." Batterson applies, "God is great because nothing is too small for Him, either."
We have large and small needs. I'm in great need of remembering how much the process happens with relationships closest to us. Believe and prophesy the promise and truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwSIYvpOkc
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