I usually read this narrative with a particular focus on David, but this time I have been fascinated with Saul. He is a tragic tale of self-obsession, neurosis, suspicion, self-loathing and a tragedy of deep insecurity. And yet he had so many things in his favor, but he just couldn’t see it. 

I am more like Saul than I dare to admit.

David found reason to sing, where before he could just sigh. He found reason to trust, where before he only doubted. He found reason to rejoice, where before he could only lament. 

Memory in the Hebrew tradition isn’t simply a recall of an event. Rather, it is a revisitation, a reliving of what went before. It was part of the way that a largely oral tradition kept a record of a people with a unique origin story alive. Feasts and festivals and gatherings were ways to revisit memories, and to recall the goodness and faithfulness of God across generations. David asks the LORD to revisit his covenantal faithfulness and in so doing to act on his behalf as a recipient of that faithfulness.

Before we are prone to sin we first have to forget who we are in Christ! When we are able to remember that we are holy, and cherished, and beloved by God, and that we have been adopted into His family as sons and daughters who get to serve as priests of His great Kingdom, well then, sin seems … beneath us, unfitting for us to trifle with, unworthy of our attention and distraction. 

You give your best to those who don’t care about you and you give your worst to those who do care about you deeply.

How much of our lives is spent giving the best of ourselves to people who don’t love us back, and who maybe aren’t even in our God-prescribed limited sphere of influence? Near strangers at work who we long to impress, people in casual social circles whose lives we covet deeply, people online who we don’t really know at all? And how much of our lives then ends up giving the people who love us the most, the very worst versions of ourselves?