Monday, March 30

Scripture: So Saul said, “Bring the burnt offering here to me, and the offerings of well-being.” And he offered the burnt offering.”(1 Samuel 13:9).

Observation: Saul learns early in his reign as king that he is doomed to fail. Saul was only just anointed the first king of Israel. He had one successful military campaign under his belt (see 1 Samuel 12), which galvanized his legitimacy and united all twelve tribes of Israel under his authority. Saul has turned his attention to the Philistines on the western border of Israel with the objective of pushing the Philistines toward the Mediterranean Sea and claiming more territory for Israel. The Philistines meet Saul on the battlefield with three thousand chariots (the ancient equivalent of tanks) and “soldiers as numerous as the sand on the seashore” (1 Samuel 13:5). The Israelites are outmatched. Many of Saul’s soldiers defect and run home; others run to the closest hiding spots in mountainside caves; and all those who stayed were “quaking with fear” (1 Samuel 13:7). Saul is desperate because he’s lost the morale of his troops and his chances of winning against the Philistines dwindle with every solider who deserts him. It is out of this desperation that Saul takes it upon himself to offer sacrifices to God as a way of invoking God’s favor in battle. This move is so desperate, it’s absurd. Saul is not a priest or a prophet. He has no authority to offer a sacrifice. The prophet Samuel, we learn later, had told Saul to wait for him so that he, Samuel, could offer a sacrifice and ask for God’s help in battle, but Saul went ahead and offered the sacrifices anyway. Saul makes a rash, split-second decision driven by the heat of an anxious moment. He pays the price. When Samuel hears what Saul has done, Samuel says that Saul’s kingship will be taken from him and given to someone else.

Application: This is a classic example of someone making a decision too quickly and therefore making an error that was completely avoidable. Samuel came down hard on Saul because of the content of Saul’s error. The content was, Saul made an illegitimate sacrifice to God in order to swing the upcoming battle in Saul’s favor. But another lesson of the story is the process of Saul’s decision-making, as opposed to content of the decision. Saul’s process was, essentially, “Shoot first, aim never.” Saul moved too fast. He made a hasty decision that he probably wouldn’t have made, had he taken time to think through the consequences of his actions. The lesson here is a piece of nuts-and-bolts practical advice: some situations call for an unhurried approach where you slow down and think through what the next right step is. Are there situations that call for immediate decisive action? Yes, and they happen all time, usually in emergencies. But Saul’s circumstance isn’t an emergency. His error in judgement arises out of a false sense of emergency, urging him to make a hasty choice. We should remember this acronym for the word FEAR: False Emergencies Appearing Real. The path of wisdom separates the true emergency, which calls for immediate action, from the vast majority of the ordinary, which calls for unhurried deliberate thinking. How many regrets might we avoid if we took the time to think?

Prayer:

Had I been there, a member of the crowd in Jerusalem on that history-pivoting week when You flipped tables and spoke truth to power and took the hit for the friends who abandoned You and forgave the people who killed You, though I like to imagine myself a main character in the story, someone with a speaking role at least or maybe, just maybe the lone faithful who stays at Your side as you walk the way of pain to the top of the hill, You know as well as I do that what I would have done is nothing. I would have done nothing. Most likely I would never have seen You, not because You were hidden, but because I was too hurried. I would have been busy with my business. I would have done my shopping, my sacrificing, my spousing, my sprinting to keep up with my kids. What I wouldn’t have done is take the time to notice the world changing. I wouldn’t have slowed down, paused, reflected, attended, discerned, thought through- in a word, seen. The only world I know is that which I make the effort to see, and if I don’t slow down and make the effort to see You now, who am I kidding that I would have seen You way back then? I would have done nothing because I would have seen nothing- nothing but the hurry I choose to live. For the wisdom to make most of my decision-making the unhurried deliberate kind and the mind to separate the truly urgent from the urgently true and the grace to notice the world changing before me in ordinary blessings, I pray. Onward we go: amen.