Election Season Blues

I’m going to admit it. This election season has made me more anxious than I ever remember being during an election year. I’ve spent WAY more hours on Facebook than I should have. I’ve gotten sucked into threads and have found myself responding with long, impassioned posts – something I normally don’t do as Facebook really isn’t the greatest place for debates.

Most years, while I may not be crazy about our candidate, I haven’t suffered much angst voting for him. This year has been very different.

When Donald Trump first appeared on the scene, I kind of looked at him as comic relief. After all, the man was orange and had the weirdest hair in the history of political candidates. And let’s face it – he had some great one liners. I can always appreciate sarcasm at its finest.

But I didn’t think it was serious. I thought he’d fade away and drop out, having had his moment of fame. That wasn’t what happened though. Soon, I realized that he was going to be a real contender, and I had to look my convictions squarely in the face. Was all that talk about character mattering really just talk – or did I believe it?

Yet, the alternative was unimaginable – Hillary in the White House seemed synonymous with the apocalypse. I went from NEVER Trump to MAYBE Trump, and my perch on the fence of indecision seemed both precarious and terribly uncomfortable.

Teetering on the Fence of Indecision

I would make up my mind to jump off firmly on one side of the fence, only to read some fiery post or article and find myself swaying toward the other side of the fence. It made me anxious and upset. More than that, I felt both sad and angry that it had all come down to the choice of Hillary or Donald.

It seems this whole election has been made up of this weird fence-perching for me.

When the now notorious recording of 2005 came out, I wasn’t really surprised – horrified, yes. Surprised, no.

Was anyone really? The man owns a strip club. He’s on his third wife who is young enough to be his daughter and looks like a super model. I could be way off base here, but I sincerely doubt that Trump chose Melania because of her personality. He’s been on Playboy’s cover. He’s pals with Howard Stern and been a guest on his show. (For those of you who don’t know who Stern is, he was very popular radio personality when I was in my 20s and made a huge name for himself by basically objectifying women in the most demeaning, degrading ways possible).

I know all the arguments – who are we to judge? You don’t know about the other candidates morals really. That’s true, but I’m only responsible for what I DO know. What I knew about Trump’s character made me queasy.

At the same time, I was appalled and angry at the utter hypocrisy of people who were outraged by Trump’s words, yet touted 50 Shades of Grey as great entertainment, and who crucified the women who accused Bill Clinton of not just talking about assaulting women, but actually doing it.  Megyn Kelly at Fox News eviscerated Trump for his ugly remarks, but she posed for GQ in very provocative poses. I wanted to ask her what she thought men were thinking about her when they looked at those pictures. It probably wasn’t about how intelligent she was or what great reporting skills she had.

Our whole culture is saturated in sex. Trump is just a product of that environment – not an anomaly. I’m not sure why so many were horrified when you can’t check out at the grocery store without being visually assaulted by women’s body parts, and yet media outlets’ sensibilities seemed more sensitive than my grandmother’s.

Too Many Voices in My Head!

Then there were the various articles, tweets and pleas from various Christian leaders. There were the ones that told us we were idolizing America if we were patriotic at all. It was implied we couldn’t really love Jesus  or be very spiritual if we voted for Trump. Then we were told that we couldn’t really love Jesus (or America) and were self-righteous prudes if we didn’t vote for Trump – that if we didn’t vote at all or wrote someone in, we would be personally responsible if Hillary became President.

No wonder the anxiety rates during this election season have reached an all time high. No wonder people want to just pull the covers over their heads until November 9th!

I don’t know if you remember the song, “Stuck In the Middle With You,” but the lyrics that have kept running through my head this whole election cycle are: “Clowns to left of me, jokers to the right, here am I stuck in the middle with you.”

Coming to Some Conclusions

This past week, I’ve just sort of pulled back and thought and prayed about all of this, and I’ve come to a few conclusions.

1. There will be life after Nov. 8th. November 8th is not the end of the world as we know it. I promise. On November 9th the sun will rise and set just like it did on November 7th. Everything we know will not come to an immediate, screeching halt. No matter who wins, life will go on. It may change a bit as time goes on, but it will go on.
2. Which brings me to my next conclusion – once the election is over, both candidates will go on with their lives, and they probably won’t care what happens in yours. They won’t care if you burned every relational bridge in your life and sacrificed your witness for Christ to support them. The person who wins will be thinking about their inauguration and who will be in their cabinet. The loser will think about his or her next steps. Neither will personally care or thank you for alienating everyone in your life because you spent the election season calling people names and telling them how they just don’t love Jesus enough if they didn’t or did vote for Trump or Clinton.
3. While we are talking about loving Jesus, please stop judging others love and desire and commitment to Christ based on who they do or don’t vote for. Seriously. One of my gifts is seeing things from others people’s perspectives. (It’s also my biggest weakness but that’s another post for another day). There are reasons – legitimate ones at least to that individual – why someone chooses to vote for Trump, not vote for Trump or even vote for Hillary Clinton. Really. We gain nothing by starting any statement, “A real Christian would never…..” or “Someone who really loves Jesus would…..” When November 9th roles around, we will still be the body of Christ. We will still serve the same God – TOGETHER. We gain nothing by hacking at various body parts because they aren’t behaving the way we think they should.
4. So, that brings me to what I have finally decided about my own vote – don’t let FEAR be the deciding factor for you. One thing I’ve seen a lot of (and felt myself!) is fear, but the Bible tells us that that fear is NOT from God.

If you look and pray about all the information and decide Trump is who you want to vote for, then do so. If you look at everything and pray and decide that you will write in a candidate, then do that. Just make sure you are doing so with the clear view that no leader will “fix it.”

The truth is there is a bigger calendar than the one we look at everyday. It’s God’s calendar, and as we move toward the inevitable conclusion of time as we know it, certain things have to happen – and some of those things won’t seem too great at the time. Leaders – no matter how much we may like them or think they have it going on – are still ultimately only human. All through this election I keep coming back to this verse in Psalms.

5. However, even as you don’t let fear take over, even as you refuse to put your faith in frail humans, that doesn’t mean you can’t be sad as you look around and see America changing. I’ve heard people accused of idol worship just because they express sadness or anger over the way things are changing in our society. (Because, you know, calling people idol worshipers always brings you together in unity.) It’s okay to mourn a way of life or a crumbling culture. It’s okay to be sad when sin is glamorized and righteousness is demonized. Idol worship is NOT feeling heartsick at the realization that your children and grandchildren will be raised in a completely different country than the one in which you grew up. I would assume, the older you are, the more glaringly obvious these differences are.

6. It’s okay to be sad, so long as you remember that God is still on His throne. It’s so easy to look at circumstances and feel discouraged and helpless, but God is still sovereign. He is still on His throne. NOTHING that happens takes Him by surprise. In fact, He knew long before it happened. I know – sometimes I forget that too in my little finite human brain. Another verse that has meant a lot in my own life has taken on bigger significance in recent months.

Let’s not all miss what God is doing because we are too busy pointing fingers and worrying during this election season. Instead, let’s show the whole world, Jesus really IS the answer.

Blessings, Rosanne

I know, saying “outcomes don’t really matter,” almost feels like heresy in this day and age of being productive and using various bars by which to measure our success .

The problem comes when that mindset gets transferred to our spiritual lives and our relationship with God. We end up only seeing obedience as a means to an end – a great outcome we can measure.

But that isn’t really how God works. If you don’t believe me, take a good look in the Bible. A lot of the obedience in the Bible was blessed, but that didn’t mean the outcome was necessarily immediate or what we’d consider outstanding. Sometimes those outcomes didn’t show up until after the person who obeyed was long dead.

I started teaching about women in the Bible in my Sunday school class again, per their request. Since I had already taught on the matriarchs in Genesis, I thought it would be fun teach about the women in Moses life because they are pretty interesting.

The first two women who are mentioned in Moses’ story weren’t directly connected to Moses, but their story was intertwined in his. They were two midwives by the names of Shiphrah and Puah (yeah – glad those didn’t become popular). Basically, the Pharaoh of Egypt saw that the Israelites had started to multiply, and he became afraid of their great numbers. They hadn’t actually done anything threatening. There were just a whole lot of them. So, he made them all slaves. Seems reasonable.

They continued to reproduce at a rate that would make rabbits ashamed, so he decided to take it a step further. He told Shiphrah and Puah that when a baby boy was born to a Hebrew woman, she was to kill it. Basically, in ancient Egypt, the midwife was the first one to see the baby. If there was something wrong with it, they did something called exposing it. This was a nice euphemism for leaving the baby outside until it died. This is what Pharaoh was asking these midwives to do, but not with babies that had serious medical issues (not that that made it right, of course). He was asking them to do this with healthy baby boys.

In the Egyptian culture, children were cherished, and midwives were well-educated and held in high esteem. Pharaoh was asking these women to do something that would have seemed horrific to them. But he was Pharaoh. In that day, he was basically considered a god. They had every reason to fear him and do what he said.

However, Shiphrah and Puah didn’t do it because, it says they feared someone a whole lot bigger than Pharaoh. It says, “they feared God.”  I’m not sure how two Egyptian midwives came to fear God, but it definitely influenced their behavior. So much so, that they defied Pharaoh.

As I got to the end of teaching this lesson, one of the women in my class brought up an interesting point. It says that both Shiphrah and Puah were blessed by God because of their obedience. It says He established households for them. Some commentaries I read made the point that Shiphrah and Puah saved the Hebrew households, so God, in turn, established households for them.

What’s really interesting, though, is what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that Pharaoh changed his mind. It doesn’t say that they were successful in stopping the murder of who knows how many baby boys.

Instead, Pharaoh commands his citizens to throw the babies into the Nile River if they discovered a Hebrew baby boy.

I’m sure the women did save some lives, but the outcome wasn’t really what any of us would consider a happy ending by any measuring stick. Baby boys were still being killed – this time by the citizens.

In fact, I’d say things probably got worse because Pharaoh was no longer trying to kill of the Hebrew baby boys discreetly. He had declared an open war on them.

Yet, God still blessed the obedience of Shiphrah and Puah. Interesting isn’t it?

How many times do I stray away from what God has specifically asked me to do because I am more worried about controlling the outcome (usually in an effort to make myself look better) than the actual obedience?

God blesses our obedience, but that doesn’t always show up in the outcomes.

What outcome in your life are you trying to control? What thing is God asking you to do and you are frustrated because even though you are obeying, you aren’t seeing the results you thought you would? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

The other day, I was feeling a bit rumpled in my spirit. (I wrote about it HERE). I wrote about how God met me where I was at and what a beautiful thing that was.

I also realized something else that morning – something that was stealing my joy. The thing is, this spring has been overwhelmingly busy. A lot of the things that made me busy were good things. Things like my son’s senior year winding up and him getting some awards and recognition for his hard work (which greatly embarrassed him but had me beaming from ear to ear). Things like speaking at Converge, a teen conference that had almost 1,000 attendees (the conference, not my class!). Things like surprising my husband for his 50th birthday (and pulling it off!) and celebrating my son’s graduation with a big party.

All good things, but it’s been kind of exhausting, all the things. And because I’ve been so busy, I’ve kind of short changed my time with God more mornings than I’d like to admit. I usually try to spend an hour each morning, but over the past six weeks or so, that time has been cut short. My prayers have been sort of to the point – not a lot of time for “extras” like worship and thanksgiving, or at least not more than cursory nods to those things.

So, the other morning, I decided despite the many needs of the people I know, that I was going to spend my time worshiping and thanking God. I wasn’t going to bring Him my laundry list of needs. I was just going to focus on His greatness.

And you know what happened? It transformed my day. The cup of joy that had run a bit dry, overflowed again. My world and circumstances hadn’t changed. There were still a lot of needs – real ones – all around me,  but what had changed was my perspective.

That’s the thing – worship brings joy into our life. A friend of mine who attends my Sunday school class, shared her word for the year. It was Praise. She said she chose praise because the Bible tells us that God inhabits the praise of His people and she wanted more of God’s presence.

In the Psalms, David was always pretty raw about his feelings and emotions. Often a Psalm would start with all of his troubles and some of them were pretty serious, but then David would purposely start to praise God. By the end of the Psalm, his perspective had changed.

That’s what worship and praise does. Yes, we are praising God and we are worshiping Him. We are doing it FOR and TO God, but I love how God blesses us even in something that isn’t supposed to be about us at all.

We pour out our praise to God like an offering, and He splashes joy back on us.

I’m not sure how I forgot this, but what really transformed my prayer life was incorporating worship and praise into my personal quiet time. I grew up in church, but for some reason, worship to me was the songs we sang between the opening prayer and the sermon. When I started to worship on my own, it was life giving and transforming.

If you are new to personal praise and worship, you might feel a bit awkward. I know I did. I mean, it’s not like God doesn’t know who He is. But please don’t let awkwardness keep you from spending time every day worshiping God – even if you can’t sing.

Here are five ways to worship individually besides singing along to worship songs.

1. Read a Psalm to God, substituting personal pronouns. For instance, if you are reading Psalms 34:1, it says, “I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall continually be in my mouth.” You can turn that into personal worship by saying, “I will bless You at all times; Your praise will always be in my mouth.” It gets easier with practice.
2. List God’s attributes out loud. A lot of times, I will take the alphabet and list one of God’s attributes for each letter. You do have to get a bit creative with letters like x.
3. List God’s promises out loud. I write down the verses with promises on a 3×5 card, and then I personalize it by saying the promise and then praising God for the ways He has fulfilled it in my life. I always felt kind of weird reminding God of all the good stuff about Him, until I realized that it’s more about reminding me of who God is not reminding Him who He is.
4. Write out a praise poem. I like to write my worship poems in shapes, but that’s just me. Some people color code them or draw doodles or just write them out. The nice thing about writing something out like that is you can look at it again and be reminded of how awesome God is.
5. Read hymns out loud. A lot of hymns have some great theology about who God is and what He does for us. For me, reading something familiar out loud makes the words sink in a bit more than when I sing them.

Don’t just limit yourself to these suggestions. Be creative. God certainly is and He is pleased when we worship and praise Him.

What is your favorite way to worship God? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

Today, I am over at Arabah Joy’s for her weekly Grace & Truth Linkup. Come check it out!

Some of my very favorite books are the Anne of Green Gables series. When Anne was feeling out of sorts, she would say that she felt rumpled in spirit.

I’ll be honest – this week, my spirits have definitely felt rumpled. In fact, I have felt sort of at a loss as to what to blog about on here. Have you ever felt like that – just sort of blah. It’s not like I’m feeling navy blue, more like light blue.

I think it is a convergence of a lot of things – the end of a whirlwind of activity for one thing. I had my last official event at my house on Monday, and while that is a relief, there is also a bit of deflation when you get past a period of a lot of busy. It’s kind of that same feeling you get after Christmas is over.

My dad is also doing a bit worse lately. His numbers have gone up (which is not good), and so he has had to up his chemo treatments. Not only does that mean more frequent trips to Columbus, but it also means more side effects for him.

Not to mention, the world seems to be going to heck in a hand basket lately. Sometimes, I feel like I’m Alice and I’ve tumbled down the rabbit hole and everything I thought I knew is upside down and sideways.  My heart grieves for all the loss and pain and horror that happened in Orlando the other week. I can’t even imagine how difficult and dark these days are for the families of those who died.

I also feel rather bewildered by the backlash against Christians, too. It’s hard to hear people blame believers for this act of violence by someone who pledges allegiance to a belief system that is responsible for systemically killing Christians in the Middle East. It’s also, to be completely honest, kind of worrisome. It makes me fearful of the future and what that will bring. It makes it hard to know what to do or say, really. I’m feeling off balance.

Add to this a son entering a new chapter, and well, my spirit is definitely feeling a bit rumpled.

This morning, I went to my favorite place to spend time with God – my back porch. I started out just telling God how I felt – kind of sad, kind of confused and kind of blah. I didn’t even crack my Bible open. I just sat there, sharing that I didn’t know what to write or what to say or even which direction to take.

As I sat there, I took in my surroundings. Now, I live in a city neighborhood, so it’s not like I’m out in the country. But this morning, the birds were singing and it was beautiful. The squirrels were playing tag up and down the trees, and one intrepid little guy jumped onto the hammock in my neighbor’s yard. He had such a hard time getting out until he finally flipped himself out where he sat there for a minute, kind of stunned. I laughed out loud because, when you aren’t the one stuck in the hammock, it is pretty funny.

While the birds were singing and the squirrels were being goofy, a rabbit came hopping into view. It turned and looked at me, kind of cocking its head as if to inquire who I was.

It might seem odd to some, but God met me on my porch. The Creator used His creation as a balm to my wadded up, wrinkled soul. I found myself cracking my Bible open, a spirit of hope invading fluffing my spirit.

God is always good to meet us right where we are at. I don’t know why I persist in thinking I need to somehow clean myself up or put up a spiritualized front when I spend time with God. Maybe it’s because I think He has to get tired of me and my petty, human issues, my whining and my weaknesses. God has shown me again and again, though, that He is ALWAYS faithful – even when I am not.

He has the answers even when I don’t know the questions.

He wants to know me even when I feel not worth the effort.

He wants me to come to Him when I am weary even when I feel embarrassed by my weakness.

How about you? Are you feeling a bit rumpled in spirit too? Are you not even sure what to pray lately or like you’ve read the same verses over and over? God’s invitation to come to Him is a standing one – He is always open and He is always available. We never are too much of a bother or too much of an annoyance. His lovingkindness is everlasting and He wants to spend it on you. The question is, will you let Him?

Blessings, Rosanne

I’ve been reading through the book All the Places You’ll Go by Jon Ortberg, and since I am doing the workbook too, I’ve had the opportunity to revisit some of the Bible stories that are so familiar to me from my Sunday school days as a child. While I have re-read those as an adult (and I highly encourage you to do the same as I guarantee you will be kind of shocked about how non-G-rated the Old Testament stories actually are), it’s been a little while. So, when I got to the story of Gideon found in Judges 6 and 7, I settled in to really absorb the story – not as I have always remembered it but as it is written.

The book of Judges is filled with some pretty wild stories, but the plots are all the same. Israel would sin (this usually included worshiping other gods). God would punish them by allowing a neighboring country to oppress them. Eventually, Israel would get miserable enough that they’d repent and cry out to God, and God would raise up a judge and deliver them. Everything would go along fine for a while, and then they’d start worshiping other gods again and the story would repeat itself.

When Judges 6 opens, Israel is in pretty dire shape. In Judges 6:2, it says, “The power of Midian prevailed against Israel. Because of Midian the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which were in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds.”

Basically, what was happening was that every time the Israelites would start planting their crops, the Midians would come and destroy it all, including not just the crops but also all the livestock.

Our first glimpse of Gideon finds him secretly threshing wheat in a wine press. Not being a farm girl myself, I decided to look up what it meant to thresh wheat. Basically, the threshing floor was a large space where the wheat was laid down and oxen were lead across to crush it so the grain could be separated from the husks. A wine press was much smaller and enclosed (remember the I Love Lucy episode?). So, that means that Gideon was probably stomping around on the wheat himself. It also meant that nobody was making any wine either.

Things were bad in Israel.

If you remember stories of Gideon from Sunday school, you probably remember the whole laying out the fleece a couple times. If you dig a little further back in your memory, you might recall that when God tells Gideon to raise an army, God whittles that army down to a mere 300 men (and this against an enemy that is described as locusts in number), and that God’s plan involved pitchers, torches and yelling in the middle of the night.

I have to say though, that the several things that stood out to me in this story were not ones I remembered.  The first thing that hit me was how the angel of God addressed Gideon. In Judges 6:12, it says, “The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.”

Valiant warrior was NOT how Gideon saw himself. It probably was not how other people saw Gideon either. This was a guy who was sneaking around in the middle of the night trying to thresh a tiny amount of wheat. He was not exactly hero material.

Gideon points out all the awful things going on and questions that God is really with him, never mind everyone else. When the angel tells Gideon that God has a solution and Gideon reveals what he really thinks of himself.

Gideon immediately protests saying, “Oh Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family sit he least in Mannasseh, and I am the youngest in my father’s house.”

Throughout the story, it took a lot of convincing for Gideon to even begin to believe he was who God said he was – a valiant warrior. In his mind, he was the least of the least. His family were the ones that lived on the wrong side of the tracks. And even in his family, he was the youngest, the least important, invisible.

In my mind, I’m wondering how you can doubt what the angel is telling you because, well, there is an angel talking to you. If that isn’t proof positive that things aren’t what you’ve always thought, I don’t know what is.

Yet, don’t we do the same thing? God sent His Son to die for us. He paid a steep price to bring us into His family, so He should have a very clear idea of what kind of identity that gives us, as His children.

You may be saying, “Well, I know who I am in Christ?” My question to you is, “Are you living that way?”

Head knowledge lived out in confidence is true belief. 

The enemy wants you to not believe you really are who God says you are. He wants you to continue to think about what you lack in yourself. He wants you to continue to want signs and continual affirmation about your identity – because then you don’t actually DO anything. You are stuck and paralyzed.

Do you believe you are who God says you are? What parts of your identity are the hardest for you to believe? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne

Recently, I’ve been getting these little 3 to 5 minute podcast meditations from Emily Freeman (from Chatting at the Sky). Basically, she reads a scripture and talks about it, all with this lovely piano music playing in the background. She did seven of them, and they were just what I needed in my past very hectic week.

One of the passages she shared was in John 5:1-9. It’s the story of the man by the pool of Bethesda who was sick (although I’ve often heard him described as lame, no verse really says that specifically but since Jesus tells him to pick up his bed and walk, mobility was kind of an issue for him, whatever the actual problem he had).

The verses tell us that an angel of the Lord would stir the water, and the first person in the water would be healed. Obviously, this was a big hangout for those who had various types of physical problems. In verse 3, it says, “In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters.”

Our of all this multitude, there was a man who had been waiting for his turn in the waters for a long time. In fact, it says that he had been waiting 38 YEARS. I’m 43 years old, and I can’t imagine waiting for anything from kindergarten until now.

But this man had been lying by the side of that pool for almost four decades. During that time, he had probably seen the angel stir the water countless times, and every single time, someone else got in that water before he did and they were healed. The problem wasn’t that the miracle didn’t happen. The problem was that the miracle was happening for everyone BUT him. It was never his turn, and after 38 years, you have to wonder if he had started to doubt that it ever would be.

Yet, he kept showing up every day because it was the only hope he had, slim as it was.

Jesus approaches him BECAUSE Jesus knew the man had been in his current condition for a long time. And then he asks a funny question. He asks the man, “Do you wish to get well?”

Thirty-eight years to the same place in the hopes he – the guy who was lame and had nobody to help him – could beat the hordes to the miracle and Jesus was asking if he wanted to get well?

I don’t know if the man had heard of this Jesus of Nazareth, but regardless, he answered politely (which quite honestly might have been more than I would have done under the circumstances. At the very least, I would have probably started laughing hysterically).

The man tells Jesus, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

You’ll notice the man didn’t really answer Jesus’ question. Instead, he seems to be trying to explain his failure to get well all those years, like he thought maybe Jesus didn’t think he tried hard enough to participate in his own miracle.

Then Jesus simply says, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.”

Eight simple words, and it says the man became well, picked up his pallet (or bed) and started walking.

All those years,

All that waiting,

All that trying,

All that disappointment every time he failed to make it in first.

And Jesus gives the man his miracle without any effort on the man’s part at all.

I wonder what you’ve been waiting on, praying about, trying to fix or solve. It doesn’t have to be a physical ailment. It can be an emotional wound, a deep disappointment, something you keep failing at.

You keep showing up. Like the man by the pool, you get points for tenacity and perseverance, and I don’t want to undervalue that. After all, if the man hadn’t been at the pool, he would have not encountered Jesus.

When Jesus whispers, Do you want to get well? maybe you have to force down the hysterical laughter or prevent the angry words from spilling from your lips. Instead, you point to all the ways you have tried and failed, all the ways you aren’t up to the task of getting the miracle you’ve desperately been waiting for.

The thing was, the man at the pool of Bethesda didn’t need a miracle. He needed Jesus.

And I’m wondering if maybe, just maybe, what you need isn’t another solution or another idea or another thing to try. I’m wondering if what you really need is Jesus, too.

So, do you want to get well?

Blessings, Rosanne

Today I’m over at Arabah Joy for the Grace & Truth link up. Come check it out HERE! 

As I’ve mentioned in the previous two blogs posts that are part of this series, I recently reread the story of David and Goliath as part of a Bible study I’m doing. Since the story is so familiar, I tried to really read it, and not just skim over it. By slowing down and really seeing the story with fresh eyes, I saw three things I had never noticed before. I wrote about the first two things – serving a living God and the necessity of leaving some things behind in order to move forward – in two previous posts.

The third thing I noticed is found in I Samuel 17:38, it says, “Now Eliab his oldest brother heard when he (David) spoke to the men; and Eliab’s anger burned against David and he said, “Why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your insolence and the wickedness of your heart; for you have come down in order to see the battle.”

I love the next verse. David basically asks, “What did I do now?” In the New English Translation (NET), it says, “Can’t I say anything?” It sounds so much like typical brothers, doesn’t it?

But there was more going on here than brothers squabbling. See, this army of grown men were terrified of Goliath. They had been listening to his taunts for 40 days, and they didn’t see any way out of the battle without Israel becoming the Philistines’ servants because who could beat a guy who was almost 10 feet tall? It seemed impossible because Goliath seemed a whole lot more real when he bellowed at them from the battle field than Yahweh did.

But  to David, fresh from the sheep pasture, a 10-foot-tall man seemed no different to him than a lion or a bear. He had relied on the living God to defeat those enemies, and Goliath just seemed like a louder version.

So, David started asking questions: Who is this guy? Why does the think he can taunt our living God? What will be given to the guy who answers his challenge and kills him?

Young David’s questions hold an indirect criticism of the grown men around him, including his oldest brother Eliab. Eliab who had cowered with everyone else while the giant threw down his challenge day after day.

I’m not sure exactly what the dynamic was between the oldest and the youngest of Jesse’s sons, but Eliab’s response to David’s questions makes it clear that something was just waiting to bubble to the surface.

When we look at stories in the Bible, we have to take out a different cultural lens through which to view events. As the oldest, Eliab would have felt that he was David’s authority and would be held responsible for David’s actions.  I’m not sure if it was fear for David’s life; fear that he would have to answer to Jesse about not stopping David from getting himself killed; the fear of the shame it would bring if David got himself killed and ended up indenturing the entire nation of Israel to the Philistines; or fear that David would actually succeed. Whatever was fueling it, the Scripture says Eliab’s anger burned hot.

He was not just kind of annoyed with his little brother. He was FURIOUS.

Another thing to keep in mind is the context of the story. Just one chapter before, Samuel had gone to Jesse’s home and had anointed little David as the next king of Israel.

After God rejected the first six sons.

That included Eliab, Adinadab and Shammah who all, coincidentally, were at the battle listening to Goliath and cringing on the sidelines with the rest of Israel’s army.

When Samuel first saw Eliab, he thought he was the new king. After all Eliab looked the part, but God told him in I Samuel 16:7, “But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

I’m sure that rejection still stung for Eliab, who as the oldest had every right to expect to be the anointed one. Now his youngest brother shows up and ends up showing him up – again.

It’s really no wonder that the man who was rejected for his own heart motivations wanted to cast doubt on the motivations of God’s chosen..

While it doesn’t say this, I believe the reason Eliab was so incredibly angry with David had a lot more to do with the fact that David’s questions and his desire for action actually reinforced his anointed status.

Let’s face it, Eliab had had ample opportunity to step up to the plate and defeat Goliath himself. David didn’t show up until the 41st day that Goliath had been issuing his challenge.

For Eliab, David’s questions didn’t just enforce his anointing, they reinforced Eliab’s rejection by God.

How does this apply to us today? Well, I think it applies in a few ways.

1. People who are close to you are often the biggest objectors when God calls you to slay your own giants or to move forward. There are always a variety of reasons for this, some that even come from good things like love and concern. For instance, the mom who tries to prevent her child from doing mission work in a dangerous part of the world is probably doing that out of fear for her child and her desire to keep him or her safe. Even though her opposition comes from her love for her child, it’s still wrong because it’s selfish. That kind of opposition can be much harder to ignore than opposition that comes in the form of anger and accusation, No matter the type of opposition that comes, though, it often catches us off guard when it comes from our nearest and dearest, doesn’t it?

2. People often use perceived responsibilities to keep us from moving forward. You’ll notice Eliab asks David what he’s done with the few sheep he’s supposed to be shepherding. The implied criticism is that he can’t even do the little thing he was supposed to, so how could he be asking about a giant? In our own lives, people will point to our children or our jobs or a host of other things to keep us “in our places,” not because that is where we actually belong but because that is where they are most comfortable seeing us.

3. People who have delayed or denied God’s calling on their own life are usually the loudest (and sometimes meanest) naysayers when we move to follow God’s calling. Maybe it’s because they are truly afraid or maybe it is because it makes them look bad, but it seems that those who have chosen to remain on the sidelines are the ones who get angry about those who choose to engage in the battle. Eliab had had his own chance at going out to defeat Goliath but he had chosen to stay on the sidelines. Even though he looked like a king, God had been right when He said Eliab didn’t have a king’s heart.

4. People who object to you moving forward into God’s calling often assign false motivations to your actions. Eliab called David both prideful or arrogant and wicked. David’s motivations were neither, but he could have allowed Eliab’s anger and accusation to distract him from the task at hand – defeating a giant. I don’t know about you, but nothing feels more unfair as when someone assigns motives to my words or behavior that aren’t true.

For David, the battle to kill Goliath didn’t start when he ran onto the battle field or even when he went to pick out five smooth rocks. His battle began back in a field with some sheep when his father asked him to simply obey. It continued when he had to leave some things behind in order to go forward. It concluded when he had to ignore his brother’s anger and accusation to focus on the battle ahead. Actually running toward Goliath with his sling was the end result of all the steps forward David had made up until that point.

How about you? What task is God calling you to and what things are standing in the way of your obedience? I’d love to hear about it!

Blessings, Rosanne