Rēad to Read …Again
Daily Reading: I Samuel 28-31
I Samuel 29:9
And Achish answered and said to David, I know that thou art good in my sight, as an angel of God: notwithstanding the princes of the Philistines have said, He shall not go up with us to the battle.
God providentially delivered David that day. Sometimes He does this. The Philistines were about to battle with Israel. Samuel, being brought up from the dead by the wicked witch of Endor, had told Saul that he would die the next day. This was the next day. Saul would die, his sons would die, all his men, and his armourbearer died on the same day. Had David been in this battle, who knows what would have become of him? He may have been there when Saul was wounded and blamed for the king’s death. He may have had to lock swords with Jonathan. Or, he may have been faced with one of those scenarios and knowing he couldn’t raise his hand against them fled in the day of battle. Frankly, there is just nothing good that could have come from David fighting in this battle.
Yet, he wanted to fight. God intervened by using the ego, pride, and/or distrust of the Philistines to cause David to be free of those potential snares. After all, there is an unseen hand of God’s providence that involves Him in the affairs of men. There was that Sunday night so long ago that Mrs. Howe and I were delayed from leaving church. This went wrong, that went wrong, we had to deal with this and that, it was frustrating, after all, my Sunday night ice cream and recliner was calling my name. It had been a big day, there was much work on that day from morning to night. Ready to go home, no doubt. But then came the delays. This person had to talk with me, it seems like one hundred little foxes were spoiling the vine of us leaving the church building for our twenty-minute drive home.
Upon finally leaving we were not two miles away and noticed the wreck. It had just happened minutes earlier. Multiple cars were involved, and it seemed like bodies were lying everywhere. We were astonished at the carnage. Had we left fifteen minutes earlier we probably would have been in that wreck. We pulled over and prayed for the souls involved and made sure to thank the Lord for 0ur delay. I’ll never be convinced otherwise, God supernaturally spared us from being in that wreck.
As a teen, I was working at a lake side attraction where rowboats and canoes were rented out by the hour. Early in the morning, if it had rained overnight, I was to pump all the water out of these boats. I was using a bilge pump that was plugged into an extension cord. I knew the danger of water and electricity. The summer before that one a family friend had been electrocuted because he was working on a boat and the extension cord dropped in the water. He died instantly. I was very careful to make sure the extension cord was not in the water. But somehow the boat moved, and that cord dropped in the water. I was sent sprawling on the dock, electrocuted with full force. Why didn’t I die? The only answer I can rationally come up with was the Lord spared me that day. Perhaps He knew I would be writing this Rēad to Read Again series of devotions and He wanted them written. Who knows. The same with David. Why did the Philistines fire him from their army? Only the Lord knows the unseen story of that mystery.
Dr. William T. Howe