Max Lucado (6 page)

David's men can't believe what their leader has done. Neither can David. Yet his feelings don't reflect theirs. They think he has done too little; he thinks he has done too much. Rather than gloat, he regrets.

Later David felt guilty because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe. He said to his men, “May the Lord keep me from doing such a thing to my master! Saul is the Lord's appointed king. I should not do anything against him, because he is the Lord's appointed king!” (24:5–6 ncv)

Saul exits the cave, and David soon follows. He lifts the garment corner and, in so many words, shouts, “I could have killed you, but I didn't.”

Saul looks up, stunned, and wonders aloud, “If a man finds his enemy, will he let him get away safely?” (24:19).

David will. More than once.

Just a couple of chapters later, Saul, once again, is hunting David. David, once again, out-shrewds Saul. While the camp of the king sleeps, daredevil David and a soldier stealth their way through the ranks until they stand directly over the snoring body of the king. The soldier begs, “This is the moment! God has put your enemy in your grasp. Let me nail him to the ground with his spear. One hit will do it, believe me; I won't need a second!” (26:8 MSG).

But David will not have it. Rather than take Saul's life, he takes Saul's spear and water jug and sneaks out of the camp. From a safe distance he awakens Saul and the soldiers with an announcement: “God put your life in my hands today, but I wasn't willing to lift a finger against God's anointed” (26:23 MSG).

Once again, David spares Saul's life.

Once again, David displays the God-saturated mind. Who dominates his thoughts? “May the Lord . . . the Lord delivered . . . the Lord's anointed . . . in the eyes of the Lord” (26:23–24).

Once again, we think about the purveyors of pain in our own lives. It's one thing to give grace to friends, but to give grace to those who give us grief ? Could you? Given a few uninterrupted moments with the Darth Vader of your days, could you imitate David?

Perhaps you could. Some people seem graced with mercy glands. They secrete forgiveness, never harboring grudges or reciting their hurts. Others of us (most of us?) find it hard to forgive our Sauls.

We forgive the one-time offenders, mind you. We dismiss the parking-place takers, date-breakers, and even the purse snatchers.

Vengeance fixes your attention at life's ugliest moments.

We can move past the misdemeanors, but the felonies? The repeat offenders? The Sauls who take our youth, retirement, or health?

Were that scoundrel to seek shade in your cave or lie sleeping at your feet . . . would you do what David did? Could you forgive the scum who hurt you?

Failure to do so could be fatal. “Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple” ( Job 5:2 NIV).

Vengeance fixes your attention at life's ugliest moments. Score-settling freezes your stare at cruel events in your past. Is this where you want to look? Will rehearsing and reliving your hurts make you a better person? By no means. It will destroy you.

I'm thinking of an old comedy routine. Joe complains to Jerry about the irritating habit of a mutual friend. The guy pokes his finger

Enemy destroyers need two graves.

ger in Joe's chest as he talks. It drives Joe crazy. So he resolves to get even. He shows Jerry a small bottle of highly explosive nitroglycerin tied to a string. He explains, “I'm going to wear this around my neck, letting the bottle hang over the exact spot where I keep getting poked. Next time he sticks his finger in my chest, he'll pay for it.”

Not nearly as much as Joe will, right? Enemy destroyers need two graves. “It is foolish to harbor a grudge” (Eccles. 7:9 TEV). An eye for an eye becomes a neck for a neck and a job for a job and a reputation for a reputation. When does it stop? It stops when one person imitates David's God-dominated mind.

He faced Saul the way he faced Goliath—by facing God more so. When the soldiers in the cave urged David to kill Saul, look who occupied David's thoughts: “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord” (1 Sam. 24:6).

When David called out to Saul from the mouth of the cave, “David stooped with his face to the earth, and bowed down” (24:8). Then he reiterated his conviction: “I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord's anointed” (24:10).

In the second scene, during the nighttime campsite attack, David maintained his belief: “Who can stretch out his hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless?” (26:9).

In these two scenes I count six times when David called Saul “the Lord's anointed.” Can you think of another term David might have used?
Buzzkill
and
epoxy brain
come to my mind. But not to David's. He saw, not Saul the enemy, but Saul the anointed. He refused to see his grief-giver as anything less than a child of God. David didn't applaud Saul's behavior; he just acknowledged Saul's proprietor—God. David filtered his view of Saul through the grid of heaven. The king still belonged to God, and that gave David hope.

Some years ago a rottweiler attacked our golden retriever puppy at a kennel. The worthless animal climbed out of its run and into Molly's and nearly killed her. He left her with dozens of gashes and a dangling ear. My feelings toward that mutt were less than Davidic. Leave the two of us in a cave, and only one would have exited. I wrote a letter to the dog's owner, urging him to put the dog to sleep.

But when I showed the letter to the kennel owner, she begged me to reconsider. “What that dog did was horrible, but I'm still training him. I'm not finished with him yet.”

God would say the same about the rottweiler who attacked you. “What he did was unthinkable, unacceptable, inexcusable, but I'm not finished yet.”

Your enemies still figure into God's plan. Their pulse is proof: God hasn't given up on them. They may be out of God's will, but not out of his reach. You honor God when you see them, not as his failures, but as his projects.

Besides, who assigned us the task of vengeance? David understood this. From the mouth of the cave, he declared, “May the LORD decide between you and me. May the LORD take revenge on you for what you did to me. However, I will not lay a hand on you. . . . the Lord must be the judge. He will decide” (24:12, 15 God's Word).

See your enemies, not as God's failures,
but as God's projects.

God occupies the only seat on the supreme court of heaven. He wears the robe and refuses to share the gavel. For this reason Paul wrote, “Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. ‘I'll do the judging,' says God. ‘I'll take care of it'” (Rom. 12:19 MSG).

Revenge removes God from the equation. Vigilantes displace and replace God. “I'm not sure you can handle this one, Lord. You may punish too little or too slowly. I'll take this matter into my hands, thank you.”

Is this what you want to say? Jesus didn't. No one had a clearer sense of right and wrong than the perfect Son of God. Yet, “when he suffered, he didn't make any threats but left everything to the one who judges fairly” (1 Pet. 2:23 God's Word).

Only God assesses accurate judgments. We impose punishments too slight or severe. God dispenses perfect justice. Vengeance is his job. Leave your enemies in God's hands. You're not endorsing their misbehavior when you do. You can hate what someone did without letting hatred consume you. Forgiveness is not excusing.

Nor is forgiveness pretending. David didn't gloss over or sidestep Saul's sin. He addressed it directly. He didn't avoid the issue, but he 49 did avoid Saul. “Saul returned home, but David and his men went up to the stronghold” (1 Sam. 24:22 NIV).

Do the same. Give grace, but, if need be, keep your distance. You can forgive the abusive husband without living with him. Be quick to give mercy to the immoral pastor, but be slow to give him a pulpit.

Forgiveness is choosing to see
your offender with different eyes.

Society can dispense grace and prison terms at the same time. Offer the child molester a second chance, but keep him off the playgrounds.

Forgiveness is not foolishness.

Forgiveness is, at its core, choosing to see your offender with different eyes. When some Moravian missionaries took the message of God to the Eskimos, the missionaries struggled to find a word in the native language for forgiveness. They finally landed on this cumber-some twenty-four-letter choice:
issumagijoujungnainermik.
This formidable assembly of letters is literally translated “not being able to think about it anymore.”
²

To forgive is to move on, not to think about the offense anymore. You don't excuse him, endorse her, or embrace them. You just route thoughts about them through heaven. You see your enemy as God's child and revenge as God's job.

By the way, how can we grace-recipients do anything less? Dare we ask God for grace when we refuse to give it? This is a huge issue in Scripture. Jesus was tough on sinners who refused to forgive other sinners. Remember his story about the servant freshly forgiven a debt of millions who refused to forgive a debt equal to a few dollars? He stirred the wrath of God: “You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt. . . . Shouldn't you have mercy . . . just as I had mercy on you?” (Matt. 18:32–33 NLT).

In the final sum, we give grace because we've been given grace. We survive because we imitate the Survivor Tree. We reach our roots beyond the bomb zone. We tap into moisture beyond the explosion. We dig deeper and deeper until we draw moisture from the mercy of God.

We, like Saul, have been given grace.

We, like David, can freely give it.

7

BARBARIC BEHAVIOR

E
RNEST GORDON groans in the Death House of Chungkai, Burma. He listens to the moans of the dying and smells the E stench of the dead. Pitiless jungle heat bakes his skin and parches his throat. Had he the strength, he could wrap one hand around his bony thigh. But he has neither the energy nor the interest. Diphtheria has drained both; he can't walk; he can't even feel his body. He shares a cot with flies and bedbugs and awaits a lonely death in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

How harsh the war has been on him. He entered World War II in his early twenties, a robust Highlander in Scotland's Argyle and Sutherland Brigade. But then came the capture by the Japanese, months of backbreaking labor in the jungle, daily beatings, and slow starvation. Scotland seems forever away. Civility, even farther.

The Allied soldiers behave like barbarians, stealing from each other, robbing dying colleagues, fighting for food scraps. Servers shortchange rations so they can have extra for themselves. The law of the jungle has become the law of the camp.

Gordon is happy to bid it adieu. Death by disease trumps life in Chungkai. But then something wonderful happens. Two new pris-oners, in whom hope still stirs, are transferred to the camp. Though also sick and frail, they heed a higher code. They share their meager meals and volunteer for extra work. They cleanse Gordon's ulcerated sores and massage his atrophied legs. They give him his first bath in six weeks. His strength slowly returns and, with it, his dignity.

Their goodness proves contagious, and Gordon contracts a case. He begins to treat the sick and share his rations. He even gives away his few belongings. Other soldiers do likewise. Over time, the tone of the camp softens and brightens. Sacrifice replaces selfishness. Sol-diers hold worship services and Bible studies.

Twenty years later, when Gordon served as chaplain of Prince-ton University, he described the transformation with these words:

Death was still with us—no doubt about that. But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip. . . . Selfishness, hatred . . . and pride were all anti-life. Love . . . self-sacrifice . . . and faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life . . . gifts of God to men. . . . Death no longer had the last word at Chungkai.
¹

Selfishness, hatred, and pride—you don't have to go to a POW camp to find them. A dormitory will do just fine. As will the board-room of a corporation or the bedroom of a marriage or the backwoods of a county. The code of the jungle is alive and well.
Every
man for himself. Get all you can, and can all you get. Survival of the fittest.

Does the code contaminate your world? Do personal possessive pronouns dominate the language of your circle?
My
career,
my
dreams,
my
stuff. I want things to go
my
way on
my
schedule. If so, you know how savage this giant can be. Yet, every so often, a diamond glitters in the mud. A comrade shares, a soldier cares, or Abigail, stunning Abigail, stands on your trail.

She lived in the days of David and was married to Nabal, whose name means “fool” in Hebrew. He lived up to the definition.

Think of him as the Saddam Hussein of the territory. He owned cattle and sheep and took pride in both. He kept his liquor cabinet full, his date life hot, and motored around in a stretch limo. His NBA seats were front row, his jet was Lear, and he was prone to hop over to Vegas for a weekend of Texas Hold 'em. Half a dozen linebacker-size security guards followed him wherever he went.

Nabal needed the protection. He was “churlish and ill-behaved—a real Calebbite dog. . . . He is so ill-natured that one cannot speak to him” (1 Sam. 25:3, 17)
²
He learned people skills in the local zoo. He never met a person he couldn't anger or a relationship he couldn't spoil. Nabal's world revolved around one person—Nabal. He owed nothing to anybody and laughed at the thought of sharing with anyone.

Especially David.

David played a Robin Hood role in the wilderness. He and his six hundred soldiers protected the farmers and shepherds from brigands and Bedouins. Israel had no highway patrol or police force, so David and his mighty men met a definite need in the countryside. They guarded with enough effectiveness to prompt one of Nabal's shepherds to say, “Night and day they were a wall around us all the time we were herding our sheep near them” (25:16 niv).