Worth Repeating - January 16, 2017

I Samuel 24: 4, 5 . . . David crept up unnoticed and cut off a corner of Saul’s robe. Afterward, David was conscience-stricken for having cut off a corner of his robe.

Forbearance is putting up with people you’d like to put down.*

The North American plains Indians had a custom called counting coup. (I don’t know what they called it, as counting is an English word, and coup is French.) The warriors scored points for touching the enemy and then escaping unharmed. It didn’t count if there was no risk of injury or death.* Doesn’t this sound like what David did that night in the cave, risking his life to prove that his enemy’s life was in his hands?

So what caused him to be “conscience-stricken”? He didn’t harm Saul; he didn’t even cause him public embarrassment – it is doubtful that anyone would have noticed a tiny tear on the corner of the robe of someone who had been traipsing about the wilderness and sleeping in a cave. All he did was obtain proof that he could have killed Saul but chose not to.

David’s shame reminds me of a line from the movie, You’ve Got Mail. Kathleen is lamenting that in the face of the rudeness of others, she never can think of the snappy comebacks until it’s too late. Joe reminds her that “when you finally have the pleasure of saying the thing you mean to say at the moment you mean to say it, remorse inevitably follows.” You think it’s going to feel so good to “get them back” but you usually end up sorry – if you are an honorable person.

While Saul may have been out for David’s blood, David recognized that Saul was still the king, anointed by God. Continue reading this chapter and you will see that instead of taunting Saul as he surely was tempted to do, David used the occasion to attempt reconciliation with his former mentor and friend. David, the warrior king, had a rare opportunity to be a peacemaker.

Most of us are like Kathleen in the movie – the clever retort arrives in our brains too late for us to put that obnoxious person in his place. But most of us have had the experience of “saying what you mean to say when you mean to say it” at least once in our lives. Instead of being proud of our cleverness, perhaps we should have stepped back and asked how we could have used the situation as an opportunity to be a peacemaker. . . . Well, it’s too late now . . . but there’s always a next time!

What I say says more about me than it does about the person toward whom I have directed my impassioned speech.*