1 Samuel 25: The Inverted Kingdom – Part VII
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Yesterday we spent time with David, Saul, Nabal and Abigail. Today we examine the life of Jesus and how or if it influences our own inverted lives.
Jesus comes to tell us that when we lose, we win, and when we win, we lose. St. Paul reminds us that when we are weak, we are strong and when we are strong, we are weak. Intellectually we might come to understand that when we die we live and we live we die, but it takes spiritual fortitude to live a life of inversion. If we can stand back, let God operate, listen for God’s voice, we are able to cooperate with God. As we pray, wait and communicate with God. We achieve God’s purpose in us.
We can take a lesson from Nabal, Abigail, David and Saul. We see different courses of action open to us in the lives of these four people. And if we are honest, we can see that we have the same options. We can choose to reject God for the sake of self, or to abandon self in order to do God’s will. As we see today, each of us is free to opt in or out of God’s plan.
So this is all that God asks of us: to act only in God’s interest rather than our own, to do only God’s justice rather than take revenge or hold grudges, to bring hope to the hopeless rather than succumb to despair, and to love as God loves. God asks that we do this with compassion instead of leniency, with mercy and understanding rather that possessive control and manipulation.
So what does God’s inverted kingdom offer and how do these stories show us God’s hope in us? God wants only our best, our purest, our humblest selves. God wants only to share hope with us. And God wants us to be completely free to choose this marvelous plan of inversion and love.
Images from: http://www.womeninthescriptures.com/2012/06/abigail.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul
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