Perhaps

Bible Verse: 2 Samuel 16:5-14

How many times, when something is not going our way, do we try and take matters into our own hands? To retaliate. To unload on someone who is hurting us or who has cheated us. There is something in us that wants to respond, to rise up in the moment, fueled by anger, maybe even rage. Something in us wants to answer back.

And yet the words we see in this passage, the heart of David who was deemed a man after God's own heart, come off the page like a splash of cold water.

It may be...

Not that it will be. There is no guarantee. Just, it may be. One translation uses the word perhaps. The meaning is the same, David does not know if God will see or act on his behalf. He can only trust that He will.

He continues down the road, along with the men who are with him, taking the cursing and feeling the pain of the rocks being thrown at him. I wonder what that felt like for David. If there was any part of him that wanted to save face. After all, he was fleeing his home, his kingship being challenged by none other than his own son, surrounded by the very people he was leading.

And still he kept walking, while Shimei moved along the hillside opposite of him, cursing and throwing stones. What was it like for the men who were with him? Watching their king be pelted with rocks, hearing the words being hurled at him, and seeing that he was not going to respond. Not only that, he would not allow them to respond either.

I can almost feel it, the stones, the dirt in the air, stinging as it falls around them. Would I have had the courage to keep following? To stay quiet while my leader appeared weak? Or would I have reached down, picked up one of those stones, and thrown it right back, not for me, but for him?

And there was David, likely a broken man, carrying the weight of a son who was trying to take what had been given to him by God, the kingship. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a thought: "Perhaps the Lord will see my distress..."

This is a man who had inquired of the Lord, who heard from Him. And yet, here, there is no certainty. I wonder if that word, perhaps, came from a different place. If, in that moment, he questioned whether the hand of God had been lifted from him. If his failures and his sin were running through his mind as the stones and dirt fell around him.

And still, he trusted.

Not because he knew what God would do, but because he knew who God was. Perhaps the Lord will see. Perhaps He would repay him with good.

And even if He didn't, because perhaps leaves room for the unknown, David still held on to who God had been to him. Not just in what God might do, but in what He might be allowing. There was a trust there, that even this could be part of something he did not yet understand. And so, he did not fight back and he did not allow his men to either. With a trust that had been built over his lifetime, he continued to walk, and endure.

How do we come to have that kind of heart? The heart of David, a man after God's own heart. One that can keep walking, even when nothing is being resolved, even when there is no clear answer. A posture that can hold on to the possibility that God sees, and still trust Him when there is no immediate change.

Oh, to have that kind of heart. One that, instead of needing to understand, looks to God for the strength to endure what is in front of it.

The passage tells us that David and the people with him arrived at their destination. They were exhausted, but they arrived. And David refreshed himself. We are not told what that looked like, but it is not hard to imagine, rest, food, maybe even a moment of worship, a returning to the One he has trusted all along.

And I wonder if that is part of it. Not the answering of every question, not the resolving of every wrong, but the quiet return. To rest. To be restored. To remember who God had been. Because perhaps He sees. And perhaps He is still good. Still trustworthy.

Father, build that kind of trust in me. One that does not lose sight of the fact that my life is in Your hands. That I can rest in who You are, even when I do not understand what You are doing. Thank You for seeing me, for holding what feels uncertain, and for being the One I can return to again and again. I love You Lord!