God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. 2 Sam 22:25 (MSG)

Not Perfect – Part 1

2 Samuel 22 and Psalm 18 carry almost an identical Poem/Psalm, of Davids. In 2 Samuel, the Song is placed right before the chapter that records David’s death. It's almost like an endnote, an epilogue, a eulogy of sorts about David’s life and his relationship with God. It's thought that he began writing this in his youth, while being hunted by King Saul and continued to work on it – adding to it and editing it, making it a piece that defined him over time.

He writes:

V3: He (God) is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—from violent people you save me.

V18-19: He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support.

V21: The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me.

V24: I have been blameless before him, and have kept myself from sin.

V33: It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure.

V38-39: I pursued my enemies and crushed them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed. I crushed them completely, and they could not rise; they fell beneath my feet.

V51: “He gives his king great victories; he shows unfailing kindness to his anointed, to David and his descendants forever.”

When you read 2 Samuel 22 (and Psalm 18) flat, without sinking into the story, it’s an amazing account of an unlikely hero. A man afflicted and pursued, a worshiper and poet, became a king and ruled through the strength and providence of God. It’s the summary of a good king made good and victorious only by a good God.

Which is true.

But when you start to think about David's life – the things that happened to him and the things he did; the mystery around certain events, the mood swings and emotional outbursts, the violence he inflicted; murder, betrayal, infidelities… As a king he killed his own for pleasure, as a father he didn’t chastise his rapist son… You start to see David as a complex man. He was not the bright white king, blameless and upright in all his ways. He was a conflicted and violent ruler; both warrior and worshipper, and lived between the tension of the two.

The Bible begs us to read into it, to delve into its history and characters. It doesn’t want to be read two dimensionally with us ignoring the parts we can’t explain while holding on to the bits we like. As a whole, it tells an incredible story of a lost humanity, prisoners to the nature of sin, in search of redemption, in a constant state of exodus. And alongside this reality is a completely renewed one of the Divine God taking our lives and re-writing them into the world with his love and grace. Redemption. The place where the natural and the infinite collide.

It’s not David’s purity that made him a great king and a renowned hero the world and generations over. He was not pure, he was not blameless, and he was not benevolent to a fault. But in his faults and mistakes, crimes and sins, he did bring all the broken pieces of his life before God. He didn’t hide anything (in the end) but laid bare the whole book of his heart before the eyes of the divine.

And that changed everything.

Go to Part 2 – Humble Before God

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