I’ve been thinking of David for the past two days. I’ve been thinking of David because i mentioned him to my team on Sunday. I spoke of being careless about the tasks entrusted to us and reminded them of David and what Nathan said to him. Early in his reign, Nathan had spoken from God about how David had been picked out of the crowd when he did not seem to be the ideal candidate for the job. He had been taken from the lowly job of following the sheep and elevated to royalty. Okay, so some of you have finally figured out i’m talking about king David. But David at some point seemed to have suffered a momentary memory lapse and this time Nathan came to rebuke him and remind him of where he came from. We won’t go into the details of his shenanigans. Suffice it to say that his sense of awe and gratitude had greatly diminished.
We are all prone to fall victim to the same thing; whether it is outright sin in the case of David or carelessness and even ‘ennui’ borne of familiarity, we often tend to take for granted the thing we had previously celebrated. We are put in a place we never thought we would be, we are entrusted with a task we thought ourselves grossly unqualified to handle, and we rejoice and think what a high honour. Very soon familiarity creeps in and the sense of awe diminishes; very soon we get busy, we get tired and the very thing we were so grateful for can easily become a burden and we begin looking to shift the responsibility elsewhere, we complain about all that it is costing us. Sometimes we treat it very casually indeed, it is a slow and sometimes abrupt slide into irrelevance.
Having cited David to others on Sunday it has been haunting me since. I have been rethinking my attitude to some of the responsibilities God has graciously committed into in my hands. I have been marvelling again, and regaining a sense of awe at what has been entrusted to my little person. I think of all the years when i was light years away from thinking or imagining myself being or doing what i am in my professional life and in ministry. The road for me has been anything but smooth, peppered with friendships, betrayals, upheaval, misunderstanding, varying vicissitudes, failures and successes, high drama worthy of any television series. Yet i cannot get away from the fact that i have been entrusted with a life, with gifts, ability and influence that i in no way deserve.
I am, as you are, a David taken from following the sheep and exalted to a high place. Others might have thought themselves cleverer and smarter, ‘cooler’ and younger, the ‘right’ gender, or the ‘right’ colour and altogether the perfect match for whatever has been entrusted to you, but God chose you. He specialises in taking the foolish things to confound the wise. So if you have found yourself being careless, being irritated, or complaining about something you used to feel honoured to be and do, it is time to remember where you came from, it is time to change your attitude, it is time to once again celebrate, it is time for renewed gratitude. Then will tedium melt away and joy take its place.