God is working

When you look out into the world and you see chaos, pain, suffering, all the things that we see and experience in this life at times, what do you see? Do you see meaninglessness, randomness, pointlessness, or behind it all, is there a God and is he one?

Because it's a good question and it's one that many people oftentimes wrestle with in their lives: how can a good, omnipotent, all-loving God allow evil, pain, suffering, all the chaos in this world, and still be present? It's a hard thing that happens.

Yet part of the question that begins to come up in that as you inspect it is: what is he? See, if we're to begin to believe that there is some sort of God that has revealed himself, that's the only way to know that something is good or evil, or to have some sort of expectations deep down in the way that we're wired that the world ought to operate in a certain way. But why would we think it should or ought to operate in a certain way unless we believe in some standard without?

Because if we look at just the chaos of the world and meaninglessness and we see no God, then it's just mechanical systems that are operating. There's nothing; there is no good, there is no evil, there's no expectations. We shouldn't even have these things deeply wired within us, because it just is—things just happen. But then life has no meaning, it has no purpose.

Something that God has put in us, in fact the Bible says he's written eternity once, and he's put things within us for how the world ought to be. He's put an understanding even within us that there are things that are good and right, lovely, and true. Yet, they're not revealed just by sort of some universe New Age God up here. It's not just some sort of impersonal force, which, by the way, isn't something that actually orders anything in a personal way for us. It doesn't order anything in a good way. It's not working for our benefit; it's once again just mechanical processes.

Only a personal and loving God who has revealed us and made us and created us in a certain way makes sense of the universe, makes sense of these deep feelings within of how the world should operate, makes sense of the fact that there should be good and good should win over evil, and that those goods and evils actually exist.

Today we're going to be looking at a passage of David. We've been studying David and his life. We've been studying Saul as we've been journeying through this. God is going to be working in this text. But David's going to be experiencing some evil. David has done nothing wrong, and yet he is going to have sort of a wrong injustice or injustice cast upon him.

It could seem like, "God, I'm playing by the rules, and I'm anointed. I'm supposed to be the next king of Israel. Then why are bad things happening to me? Why is this happening? What have I done? What is my crime?" These could be the words of David. These could maybe be the feelings of David.

Either way, we just know that when we go through hard things or when it feels unfair, it feels unjust, it feels wrong or not right, and we want to see the other people out there, we begin to sort of question: What is God doing? What's happening? Is he there? Is he there? Is he watching?

The point of this text today is that God is working. He is at work in the messiest parts of our lives.

So let's take a look today as I read 1st Samuel chapter 19. I'm going to read the whole text for us this morning:

Scripture reading: 1 Samuel 19

And Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants that they should kill David. But Jonathan, Saul's son, delighted much in David. And Jonathan told David, "Saul my father seeks to kill you. Therefore be on your guard in the morning. Stay in a secret place and hide yourself, and I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are, and I will speak to my father about you, and if I learn anything, I will tell you."

And Jonathan spoke well of David to Saul his father and said, "Let not the king sin against his servant David, because he has not sinned against you, and because his deeds have brought good to you. For he took his life in his own hand and he struck down the Philistine, and the Lord worked a great salvation for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced. Why then will you sin against innocent blood by killing David without cause?"

And Saul listened to the voice of Jonathan. Saul swore, "As the Lord lives, he shall not be put to death."

And Jonathan called David, and Jonathan reported to him all these things. And Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence as before.

And there was war again. And David went out and fought with the Philistines and struck them with a great blow, so that they fled before him. Then a harmful spirit from the Lord came upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his spear in his hand. David was playing the lyre. And Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he eluded Saul, so that he struck the spear into the wall. David fled and escaped that night.

Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David's wife, told him, "If you do not escape with your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed." So Michal let David down through the window, and he fled and escaped. Michal took an image and laid it on the bed and put a pillow of goats' hair on its head and covered it with the clothes.

And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, "He is sick." Then Saul sent the messengers to see David, saying, "Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him." And when the messengers came in, behold, the image was in the bed, with the pillow of goats' hair at its head.

Saul said to Michal, "Why have you deceived me thus and let my enemy go, so that he has escaped?" And Michal answered Saul, "He said to me, 'Let me go. Why should I kill you?'"

Now David fled and escaped, and he came to Samuel at Ramah and told him all that Saul had done to him. And he and Samuel went and lived at Naioth. And it was told Saul, "Behold, David is at Naioth in Ramah."

Then Saul sent messengers to take David, and when they saw the company of the prophets prophesying, and Samuel standing as head over them, the Spirit of God came upon the messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. When it was told Saul, he sent other messengers, and they also prophesied. Saul sent messengers again a third time, and they also prophesied.

Then he himself went to Ramah and came to the great well that is in Secu. And he asked, "Where are Samuel and David?" And one said, "Behold, they are at Naioth in Ramah." And he went there toward Naioth in Ramah. And the Spirit of God came upon him also, and as he went he prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah. And he too stripped off his clothes, and he too prophesied before Samuel and lay naked all that day and all that night. Thus it is said, "Is Saul also among the prophets?"

This is God's word.

Introduction

Today, as we're looking at this text, we are going to see through all this that God is at work in this. Even though chaos is happening and it seems like David should be the next king of Israel, and yet it's not really looking good for David right now—he's public enemy number one—we see that God is willing to do work in the midst of David's life even during this trial.

So as we look at it, I'm going to break it down into a few different sections. We're going to look at it in terms of the problem, the providence, and the intervention.

The first thing that we see in this text is that David is supposed to be killed by Saul. In fact, right there in verse 1, Saul spoke to Jonathan his son and to all his servants that they should kill David. But Jonathan, Saul's son, delighted much in David.

The problem is that Saul is sinning. He's doing what is wrong. Even Jonathan calls him out and says, "Why would you sin this way? Why would you take innocent blood? Why would you be unjust in this kind of way?" So he's calling him to account. He speaks well of David, right? "You're sinning against the Lord, you're sinning against David."

Here's the thing: sin makes life complicated. It's a mess, because God ordered the world in a certain way. He ordered us in a certain way. When we decide, "I'm going to do it differently, I'm going to go my own way"—not necessarily even in big ways, not necessarily even in murder, it's just God said, "Don't eat the fruit," and "I'm going to eat"—in small ways, we begin to become our own god, make our own rules, do our own thing, and it messes everything up.

You find even in this story, it complicates things. Saul sins, and all of a sudden, there's all kinds of sort of relational politics going on here. Jonathan, the heir to the throne, the king's own son, is hiding David, right? He's kind of trying to have to go behind Saul's back. I mean, is he loyal to Saul or not? Is he loyal to his family or not? Or is he more loyal to David, which makes him guilty of treason? But is it okay to be treasonous when it's unjust with the king's villain? It's complicated. It's not clean; it's messy.

Michal, who is now married to David, she has to hide David and scheme and let him out of the window. Then she lies to her father in the midst of this, which is a whole ethical implication—is that a lie in a case like this? Not the point of our sermon. At the end of the day, it makes things complicated, and it invites all kinds of responses and reactions into life. That's what's happening in this text.

See, that's the thing about the world that we live in: the problem with the chaos we experience, the problem with the evil that we see in this world, it's because this is a brokenness. God made the world good. He made it a glorious way, and he created us to live in harmony within that world that he created. We may think sometimes that when Adam sinned, it wasn't a big deal—they just ate some food that God said don't eat. What's the big deal and problem with that?

What we fail to sometimes understand are all of the ramifications that expand and come out of that. Sin makes things... see right there in that chapter, when they do it, all of a sudden it's a rebellion against God. God made you, God loves you, God wired you a certain way, and yet you say, "I can be my own God." That's what they did. You can be like God; you can sort of rise up and do your own thing, and you can exercise that own free will apart and in opposition to the will of God. That just tears the entire universe apart, because it creates an alternate reality in many ways.

We have not only this going on, but right when the sin in the garden happens, you have fear—hiding themselves. You have shame, you have blaming—they're all blaming each other: "It's her fault, it's his fault, it's Satan's fault, it's everybody else's fault." Nobody wants to take responsibility. By the next couple chapters, you have murder. Everything starts to get out of balance.

God said, "In the day that you eat of it, this fruit I told you not to eat of, you will surely die." So death all of a sudden is introduced. When we're operating in just the way that God created us in his original creation, there's life and there's love and there's blessing. When we begin to go our own way, it tears and destroys all of that. It makes it complicated.

There are things that are birthed in us that are no longer the way that God wired. It begins to twist and turn things with us—our desires go different. But it also invoked God's justice: "You've done against me, you've sinned, you've turned against me." It invokes cursing, not just on the people, but the land. So the land now, they're fighting weeds, and they're fighting, and so there's turmoil. All of the things about even the way the earth and the world operates are out of balance.

The Bible talks about in Romans that the earth is groaning right now, because it's waiting and expecting God to do his final work of healing and restoring. In the meantime, there's just this sense that things in the world are not all right. It's not because God made things evil or broken, or because he's cruel; it's because we've introduced something into this world that has broken everything. It's broken us, and we have all contributed to it in some way, all of us.

If you think about a still pond, and you throw a rock into it, you see the rhythms that that sort of balance is then bringing. If we all start throwing rocks in it... for each one where I've sinned, done wrong, and I don't have the right heart about this, and each of us is doing that, imagine the chaos that they unleash. One sin begins to have all sorts of imputations. Think about that domino effect throughout all life, all the world, and how it impacts one another.

So we see in this world a problem introduced by us, the evil that you see in this world broken by something. So is God giving up on us? Would we be hopeless? Is this the judgment, the punishment of God, that he left us to our own way?

The Bible reveals God is a God involved, and because he loves us, even kind of like a child when they go their own way, how a parent loves and tries to show them their mistakes and tries to woo them back and help them to understand and grow them and teach them and train them, in the same way God does that with us. The Bible teaches that after sin happens, the rest of the story is God pursuing people, pursuing his people, calling them to himself, working in ways to restore his people. So he's not given up on us; he's not given up on the world.

As I've said before, John 3:16, famous passage, right? "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son." He created a plan and a purpose to redeem and to heal.

The Providence of God at Work

We see even in this story the providence of God working. So that's our second piece: the providence of God is at work in our world even if we don't see it. We can't even always know that God is at work, but it's happening.

Providence is God's beneficial activity in the world, intentional ways that he works in this world ultimately for his glory and for his good purpose. It's the ways that God works in this world for his good and for his glory, ultimately for his plan—and that plan being to redeem a people to himself.

The Bible teaches that in all sorts of ways God sort of weaves and orchestrates his ultimate plan. In fact, in Romans 8:28, it talks about this: "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." God is working good for those who are called according to his purpose. It's not random, it's not meaningless. God has a plan.

As we look into this story right here, even in David's life, we begin to see the ways that God is providentially using and orchestrating and setting a stage so that even if there's evil and injustice for him right now, God is working to protect David. He is working to help David thrive, so that David will ultimately fulfill the promise and purpose that God has over his life.

So is the truth—it is the same for you and him, that God was working this ultimate plan. Even with the evil and the chaos and everything of this world when it doesn't work the way that God intended it, he still is ultimately working his plan in the midst of this.

It's hard to see when you're in the meanwhile. It's hard to understand all the ways of God. Alvin Plantinga once said—he's an American philosopher—he said, "You know, the providence of God is kind of like this: If you look, if you have a tent and you look in there and you see a St. Bernard, then you assume a St. Bernard is in your tent. There's something that exists in your tent, there's something happening, right? But if you're looking in your tent and you don't see anything... there are 'no-see-ums,' which is a very tiny bug. If you've ever been camping or backpacking, they bite disproportionately to their size. You can't really see them, but they hurt. So anyway, no-see-ums: you can't assume that there are no-see-ums in your tent just because you can't see them."

That's kind of how it works, and so are the ways with God. We don't always see or understand or know the reason at work, but that doesn't mean that he isn't. God's working in a different plane, a different reality, in different ways sometimes that are often unseen.

As we look right here, we see the providence of God working specifically in this. For example, we see that Jonathan is defending David. He's standing up for David, and it's a dangerous thing to do. He's calling out his dad's own sin. Now, this is the guy who should be preserving his own throne. David shouldn't be enemy number one; he should be working for his dad. But God has orchestrated and made Jonathan love David. Remember a few passages ago, a couple chapters ago, it talked about how he loved David and he covenants with David, and he commits like, "Hey man, we are friends. We're brothers." God has moved Jonathan's heart before this scene ever occurs to be a protector and an advocate and a friend and a companion to David. He's going to be a key individual in this. So even here, he hides David, he warns that, "Hey, there's trouble coming." God is working already by setting Jonathan up in this place.

Another thing that he does is that David evades the spear of Saul. I mean, he literally, well, in some ways dodges a spear—today we'd say "dodge a bullet," right? Like, he dodges the spear that's coming at him. In life, we've probably seen moments where like, "Man, this should have played out way different, and yet it didn't." Something, someone was working there, protecting, preserving.

Then also at the same time, we see in Michal, Saul's daughter, how she smuggles and hides. She's another instrumental person. If she doesn't warn David, David could be dead the next day. But God has orchestrated another individual.

Then God has Samuel out there in Ramah, and David goes out there and he finds refuge, finds food, he finds shelter—not necessarily protection from the king's people, but he's out there and there are people that are taking... and God, in all these different ways, is orchestrating lives and individuals and people and circumstances. We're going to see it throughout the remainder of this book, how God is always working to preserve and protect David, because he has a purpose and plan which is unfolding in David's life.

God reveals himself as a God in that way. It's throughout scripture just constantly how God says, "I know it's flowing, I know there's evil in the world, but I am at work, I am at work."

A couple passages just to bring out: For example, that God is with those who are in the trials. Isaiah 43 says to us:

"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."

There's still fire. There's still a flood. Even Jesus told us in this life there will be tribulations and trials—they come, and the world is broken. But God is still at work in them.

We see another passage where it says that God is near to the brokenhearted; he loves those who are just broken by life. There are so many passages here where God is near those who are poor, poor in spirit, physically poor. He's near the orphan and the widow. There are so many people who are hurting and breaking, and God has a heart that's working for them, working for the humble, working for the meek things of this world.

You see that God experienced our pain. This is a really powerful and important thing in Hebrews, where God... that's the thing, it's not just that God said, "Oh, I'm sorry that you have to suffer and deal with all this." God came into this world. He sent his Son, who was one with the Father, and he experienced all of the brokenness, all of the things. He was tempted in every way just as we are. He felt the weakness, he felt the pain, he felt what it's like to be betrayed by a friend, he felt what it's like to be abandoned by all the people around him, he felt what it's like to be falsely accused, falsely judged—all of the different crazy things that happened in Jesus's life. He felt all of our griefs, he felt like that because God has come to this world. He stood beside us, and we, even in our grief, can know that God knows, that God cares, that God is near.

It's hard when we're walking through it. But you have to know that God understands in a very real way, like no other God or thing out there—the Christian God. And that he experienced those things because he loved us, and he bore those things because he has a plan—not just to stand beside us and say, "Well, I feel bad with you," but because he is working ultimately a good plan to redeem, one that he promises in his word.

Finally, God promises to restore. Man, this one's all over scripture! I pulled it from Isaiah here, but this is just one of many passages where God describes what he's going to do. We have to understand ways that God operates that don't even make sense, and some of it he's described here in Isaiah where it says:

"Lift up your eyes and look around: All your children gather and come to you... Then you will say in your heart, 'Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these—where have they come from?' This is what the Sovereign Lord says: 'See, I will beckon to the nations, I will lift up my banner to the peoples; they will bring your sons in their arms and carry your daughters on their hips... Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be put to shame.'"

There's this restoration, and God is promising to a people that have lost everything, God begins to work with things of being awesome. "How can he heal that? How does he make this awesome?" But yet this is the promise of God: to work in ways that are beyond human understanding. God is working, and he's called us to trust that process.

One of the ways that this is sort of outlined really interestingly is in a book that is by C.S. Lewis called The Horse and His Boy. In this book, Shasta, the main character, is an orphan. He was raised by a guy that really wasn't his father, and he finds out all these terrible things happened on this journey of Shasta's life—hard, rough, terrible things. He finds himself at the end of the book in the darkness here, kind of just like it's all coming to a head. He's just sorrowful and weighted down, and there's this character in the dark as he's walking with his horse, and it's next to him. He's terrified because it won't talk or anything, and he kind of says, "Who are you?" It begins to sort of talk to him in this voice, and he can tell it's some sort of creature.

This is how this conversation plays out—just listen to it for a second. So this creature says to him:

"Tell me your sorrows."Shasta was a little reassured by the breath, so he told how he had never known his real father or mother and had been brought up sternly by the fisherman. Then he told the story of his escape and how they were chased by lions and forced to swim for their lives, and of all the dangers in Tashbaan, and about his night among the tombs, and how the wild beasts roared and howled at him in the desert. And he told about the heat and the thirst of the desert journey and how they were almost at their goal when another lion chased them and wounded Aravis, and also how very long it was since he had had anything to eat."I do not call you unfortunate," said the Large Voice."Don't you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?" said Shasta."There was only one lion," said the Voice."What on earth do you mean? I've just told you there were at least two the first night, and...""There was only one: but he was swift of foot.""How do you know?""I was the lion." And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. "I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you as you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came ashore where a man sat wakeful at midnight to receive you."

The story goes on—it's an interesting story, but one of the things that happens here is the lion is revealing some of the puzzle pieces in Shasta's life that did not fit. There are so many stories we know of people who were able to look back and see: "This trial, this pain, this thing that I walked through begins to make sense."

For every story like that, there are moments where it's like the no-see-ums feeling, where he can't understand and I cannot make sense of it, and I can look back over the course of it and go, "I just don't understand, this doesn't make sense." Yet in the midst of that, that is available: to hold and trust, because God has revealed himself and he has worked in so many ways. We see in this world in good ways he has been good, and sometimes we just have to find that if he has begun a work in us, he is continuing.

Scripture fortunately has given us a name and a language in science to embrace that pain and that lack of understanding, so hope to use, or we come before him: "Where are you? I'm waiting." Sometimes when we can't make sense of life, we just hold trust in the plan of God, because his ways are higher than our ways. As scripture reminds us, he is not like us. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He is beyond us, and he works on a plane and different way, weaving a tapestry of lives and circumstances and incidents. He's already revealed himself to be showing that he works in ways, and he's going to work a work which seems impossible to restore it, that doesn't make sense.

God's Supernatural Intervention

At times in life, God does intervene. So we see the intervention taking place here where, yes, there are just random events that God has orchestrated in here, but Saul's on his way, and no company of prophets is going to stop Saul and his sword from rendering murder upon David. But then God intervenes.

There are moments in life and in this world where God works like that, where he literally intervenes into our world. I realize this is... to our modern ears, this is a strange, odd story that's taking place here, especially because we're post-Enlightenment people of the West. So supernatural things like this, they just sound off and weird to us. But then if you talk to lots of Easterners, there are all sorts of people who have experienced strange and odd things in this life, ways that God worked that they didn't expect, and miracles. I've gotten even friends that have been missionaries in Africa who've told just strange stories of things that happened in like a supernatural kind of way.

God is intervening here to stop Saul in his tracks. We see in verses 23 and 24:

And he went there toward Naioth in Ramah. And the Spirit of God came upon him also, and as he went he prophesied until he came to Naioth in Ramah. And he too stripped off his clothes, and he too prophesied before Samuel and lay naked all that day and all that night. Thus it is said, "Is Saul also among the prophets?"

The king of Israel, who has all the power and who has the sword and has all the dominoes in his basket, comes, and yet God moves him, renders him powerless, and he humbles him through this incident—literally strips him of his clothes, has him laying in a fetal position naked day and night. Here's the king of Israel, and he's like a little infant, a helpless child. God humbled him in this way.

This is, as scholars virtually agree, really kind of a bookend of a story that took place when Saul first began to be anointed as king. Back in chapter 10, if you actually look and see chapter 10, this is a very similar scene that's described. Samuel in the first section says, "Hey, you're going to come to meet the prophets coming down from the high place, and then you're going to see the Spirit of the Lord will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and you will turn into another man." So this happens when he's first being anointed king of Israel.

Here's how it plays out a few verses later. It says: "When they came to Gibeah, behold, a group of prophets met him, and the Spirit of God rushed upon him, and he prophesied among them." A very similar incident, and it was said, "Is Saul also among the prophets?"

Only this time, Saul isn't changed into a better man, a man who will be the king of Israel, a man appointed and equipped. No, he's stripped down and humbled, everything taken from him, so he's lying like an infant on the ground. This is a sign of God's humiliation and humbling over Saul's life. In many ways, it's an act of God's justice to rescue and save David in this moment. This is God's intervention, and God intervenes in moments like this in life.

The one thing that I want us to also see: Why didn't he kill Saul? Why didn't he just take him out? I mean, we could solve this problem really fast—dead. God doesn't. It's because God, even in people who aren't following, is trying to work a good plan. This is an act of grace on God's mind: "Saul, once again, you've been humbled in this. God is clearly acting here. Humble yourself, Saul! Wake up!" God is trying to even work in this moment against Saul's life as an act of grace to him, as an act of warning over his life: "You're on a bad path, and you're not going to resist my plan, you're not going to win this game. Stop this."

We know, as the story will unfold in the rest of the book, that Saul will not get it; he will continue to rush headlong to his own destruction. He finds that instead of God working for him, with him, or listening to the warnings of God and letting God work him into his good plan in some way, he's fighting against it—he's fighting against it.

Ultimately, we see that there is a judgment and a finality that come in Saul's life as God intervenes at the right time. God acts in mighty ways we don't always get.

I wanted us, as we look at this, to see just one way that God promises in the word of what will be the restoration that is to come. This world is fallen, this world doesn't always make sense, but I know it's not just chaos, I know it's not just meaningless. David will see over the course of his life there were acts and things that came together where God was working, sometimes just seemed like random events that started to work through the providence of God, but sometimes the attention that he saw where God did something, God moved in a powerful way.

That's the way that God is working in this world ultimately: that even now, God is through his act of grace, through his plan, turning hearts and lives and people, even in our own lives when we resist, we go our own way. He's intervening, using events in our life to shape us, form us, love us, rebuke us.

Ultimately, God reveals himself in scripture in Revelation as what he will do one day, so that even if we don't understand the details of life, we don't understand the tragedy, we don't understand the wickedness, "I can't make sense of what happened," you can know that at the end of the story God promises to do like he foretold in Isaiah: "For I will make all things right."

Here in Revelation:

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." And he who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."

Even the story of things we cannot imagine: How is God going to make it new? How is he going to restore things in me that I know... I don't know what it's like to live in a world where I don't feel sorrow, where loss and death are no more, pain is no more. It's like that cut, you know—we get a cut sometimes that leaves a scar, but what God is saying here is he makes it like it never was in that scar.

It's holding onto that. As slow as it seems impossible, with God all things are working. Just as he's working in David's life, he is working in our lives.

So where does that leave you, and where does that leave me?

Are you like Saul—one who believes in a God, but yet really not listening to God's warnings in the ways that God was trying to work and get his attention and draw him, using events for him to listen? Are you resisting this?

Or are you like Jonathan—sometimes protecting and defending, and you're the instrument that God is using for that? Or Michal for that?

Are you like Samuel—a refuge for someone in tragedy, a shoulder to cry on, a person to call in that moment of need?

We all share in some ways something with David: we can do so much right in this world, we can be serving and seeking the Lord, and yet find there's evil and it doesn't always go the way of mankind. One thing is that we can take comfort that one day a Son of David, Jesus, came, and he faced the worst evils so that he might raise us up, heal us, restore things to us in ways that we cannot imagine. Until then, we can trust as scripture reminds us.