The Schemer

I've recently come across a passage in the book of 2 Samuel that's pretty interesting.

The set-up is this: King David's son Absalom has murdered his brother for raping his sister. He then flees.

Though David finds himself in great sorrow over the situation and Absalom's estrangement/exile, he makes no move to bring him back.

At this point an old women approaches the king with a thinly veiled story meant to drive to the heart of David's situation and provide him with reason to bring back his son.

During this conversation, she utters the following:

"Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him." 2 Samuel 14:14

I can't help but be amazed at the poetry of these two sentences. How honest this woman is about life. About its fragility.

For despite all we do and say and are, our lives in the end are as impossible to recover as a glass of lemonade spilled on the sand.

Yet at the same time this is not all of the story, for within the woman's words we find a promise that there is hope. That life does not have to end bit by bit, each part of our existence slowly dribbling out of a pail onto the dirt.

Because God, it seems, is a schemer. Though death is a formidable enemy, God is busy in His workshop, coming up with new ways to recover our estranged souls. Finding a way around the craziness of it all because of His love for us.

I like this picture of God. It's not one that we normally think of, but it is powerful. It is a picture of a Father so concerned with his lost and slowly dissipating children that He will use all the power and knowledge at His disposal to bring us back. To refill the cup of our lives.

It is the fullness to which the situation between David and Abasalom is only the faintest of shadows.

The fullness that reached its peak almost two thousand years ago in a distant land.

All for us.