These chapters are rough. Here are some bright spots I noticed:

Even though God hand-picked David to replace Saul, by all technicalities the spot belonged to his son, Jonathon. However, he doesn’t jockey for position or make a move to become the next king, but bypasses this opportunity out of love for God and his friend. What a great example of sacrificial love. (Okay we’ll cool it on their friendship now, can you tell we love them?)

David pulls together a band of men out of people who were “in trouble, or debt or discontented”. I see the gospel in that. It’s easy to pull together a group of qualified, respectable people and lead them. It takes godly leadership to lead the kind of men David did. We’ll see these men stick with him for a while.

A good chunk of the Psalms are written by David, and quite a few of them were written when he was being hunted by Saul. According to my chronological Bible, Psalms 34, 57, 142 & 52 align with today’s chapters. Check them out; I find deeper meaning in the Psalms when I read them in context. Here are a couple of my favorites in those chapters:

“Does anyone want to live a life that is long and prosperous? Then keep your tongue from speaking evil and your lips from telling lies. Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace and work to maintain.” (Ps 34:12)

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.” (Ps 34:18)

What’d you notice?

-Carly