Sure. I write books on emotionally healthy relationships. I also try to be exceedingly clear that my thoughts do not proceed from a shiny, perfect family. Maybe try the next blog over?
Like I did this morning, I talk with a lot of parents, husbands, and wives about losses that feel so much more than they can handle. (They’re often leaking out in the form of tears.)
There’s the prodigal daughter. The mother with undiagnosed mental illness. The berating father. The addicted spouse. The grown children refusing to address their conflict.
I think about the responsibility and concern I have, alongside the choices I simply cannot make on behalf of my own imperfect family members. Ruth Haley Barton writes gently,
One of the hard things that Judas’s story teaches us is that we cannot control others and their choices. Judas had been given the ministry and apostleship as much as any of the others, but his choice to ‘turn aside and go to his own place’ was his to make.[i]
My imperfect family: A Bible story that lifts my head
Nearly every day, I think of a Bible story a lot of people haven’t heard of.
First Samuel 30 forms the stuff of films like Braveheart or Robin Hood, where unshaven, sword-clad men in leather sandals tromp through muddy villages, blue smoke rising everywhere. In this story, a twenty-something someday-king David experiences one of his life’s worst tragedies—and he saw a few.
I imagine David as handsome (1 Samuel 16:12, 18). Though anointed by the prophet Samuel, David has been on the lam from a blood-crazed King Saul, who did things like chucking spears at David while David played music for him. Or massacred eighty-five priests because one of them helped David (1 Samuel 22).
David has ducked behind Philistine lines with about six hundred disenfranchised, distressed, or indebted men (1 Samuel 22:2, 13). They’ve all been staying in the Philistine city of Ziklag with their families.
And one day, the men return to a city in ashes. Amalekites have torched the place, kidnapping all the wives, sons, and daughters, “both small and great.”
Imagine with me returning to your hometown. What was your house now smolders. Your family has been taken. There is no law enforcement to be called, no GPS for likely routes to take, no realistic hope you will discover them in your enemy’s clutches alive and untouched.
Yeah, not quite the stuff of Bible stories before you tuck your kids in bed.
David, wrecked and righteous
I’ve always liked David for being such an openly emotional dude. He does at least four things really right in this passage.
Thing 1: Even as a captain of six hundred warriors, David leads them in weeping.
Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. David’s two wives also had been taken captive … And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters. (1 Samuel 30:6)
Thing 2, in also in verse 6: “But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.”
David seeks a priest to look for God’s will. “Shall I pursue after this band? Shall I overtake them?” [God] answered him, “Pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue.”
Four hundred men go with him. Thing 3: David allows two hundred, grief-exhausted, to stay back. (I like this guy’s leadership more and more.)
And Thing 4 is actually the part of the story I like the most. On this mission, these men–for whom speed matters–happen upon a foreigner who hasn’t had anything to eat or drink for three nights. They share their rations and water with him. They are Good Samaritans before Samaria is even born.
The man revives. Turns out he’s an Egyptian slave of the Amalekites, left behind—likely to die—because of illness.
A rescue story
The Egyptian leads David to the Amalekites, who are partying because of their victory. Battle ensues. None of the kidnappers escape.
The Bible reads, “Nothing was missing, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that had been taken. David brought back all. David also captured all the flocks and herds, and the people drove the livestock before him, and said, ‘This is David’s spoil.’”
I run the thumb of my thoughts over this story nearly every day for one reason. I know what it is like to experience a tsunami of loss in your home; for your gut to fall to your feet as you comprehend the scope of what has been burned and stolen. The word “home invasion” has come to mind.
Following his own home invasion, David seeks God. And then, throughout the whole story, despite assuming his family is lost forever, David is faithful to be both God-trusting and just.[ii] These qualities are related.
I assume David has cultivated a culture among his men to the point that amidst hot pursuit of the kidnappers/arsons, his men stop to do the work of mercy for a foreigner. They carry out the heart and law of God above their life-and-death mission.
Remember: God had showed deliverance to the Israelites when they were foreigners in Egypt. It’s a precursor of how Jesus would rescue us. It’s part of the reasoning God gives for showing mercy to those foreigners they’d be tempted to treat differently (Exodus 22:21, Leviticus 19:33–34, Deuteronomy 10:18-19).
God uses the everyday faithfulness of these men to rescue their families. To take back that which was lost. (It was God who allowed the Egyptian’s sickness, God who placed him in the path of David’s army.)
The caveat
To be clear, this story promises me nothing.
I am not promised that if and when I show compassion, I (nor my imperfect family) will be rewarded this side of glory. These men have not decided to help a slave—likely to do nothing for them but consume their resources—because of what they will get.
But this unique story tells me something of the heart of God and how he chooses to work. I imagine young, grief-weary David throwing his arms around Abigail, hoisting his kiddos on a hip or shoulder. I imagine, this time, happy tears.
Years later, David’s great-great (etc.) … grandson will speak of a kingdom the size of a mustard seed, dimensions of a modern-day pinhead. The seed grows into a tree up to twenty feet high.
This descendant-yet-predecessor of David will describe this kingdom like a treasure stowed away in a field, unseen, yet worth selling all (Matthew 13). This man, this true and better King, will feed crowds of thousands and thousands with five loaves of bread and a couple of fish (Matthew 14). He will kindness to Gentiles–even those part of Israel’s oppressors (Matthew 8:5–13, 15:21-28; Mark 5:1-20; John 4, and others).
He will lead a mind-blowing Kingdom delivering exponentially upon the mite invested.
God knows what my imperfect family and I—what you, too—have lost. He bears witness to grief and the machinations of the forces against us.
And friend, he asks us, trusting him as one who gives far more than he ever takes, to do the next right thing.
Like this post? You might like these other posts:
When Your Child’s Weaknesses Feel Overwhelming
Doubt, Parenting-Sabotage, and Seeing God in My Kids
[i] Ruth Haley Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry (Intervarsity Press, 2018), 185.
[ii] Despite the protestations of the 400, David even shares the spoils with the 200 who stayed behind: “For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike.” This becomes a statute in Israel.
