Ziklag

Birdseye view of Ziklag

I began keeping a Bible-reading journal about where David runs off to the Philistine king to hide from Saul. So I'm starting "in medias res" at that point.

I Sam. 30

God uses gentle chastening to teach David to trust him. The men's wives and children were taken captive and David's city was burnt. This city of Ziklag had been given to David by Achish, and David never should have lived in it anyway. It represented his compromise with Achish of Gath!--and it's no mistake that it was Achish of GATH, the same city of Goliath's origin. In fear, David had given up hiding from Saul and said "now surely Saul will kill me," and fled to the enemy. God in His mercy burned the city...he didn't want David settling there...yet spared all the captives and the men's belongings.

What I learned: God is so merciful! He uses just the amount of force needed to get the job done...no more or less. He didn't allow David's wives or his men's wives and families to be killed to make His point. He burned the bridges...the city they may have been tempted to return to...and prepared them to move out. Shortly after this, the Phillistines marched against Israel, and David was spared from fighting his own people by God's intervention. In this great battle Saul was killed and David was able to finally gain the throne.

If God had left Ziklag intact as a home for the long-homeless followers of David, it may have been hard to get them moving on to the next part of God's agenda. God means for us to be willing to leave attachments behind that are not part of his ultimate plan for us. Often he helps us to that end in ways that seem catastrophic, but are for our good and His glory.

This story has a very personal application for me. For many of my growing-up years, we lived in an "ancestral home" in SC that was built by my great-grandfather just after the Civil War (and here's an odd fact I happen to know...with the help of a former slave named Simon). This same home had seen births and deaths in my mother's family for three generations. The problem was, the place was falling in around us. The gloom of it seemed to affect (or reflect?) our family life, and I developed an unhealthy fixation on somehow fixing it up, making it new again. I even read up on carpentry and chimneys and such. (I didn't get very far.) During college I would come home in the summers and get depressed all over again at the state of the place. I felt like if I could fix that old place up, the pain of my growing-up years would be fixed in some way too. The years passed, and my dream of fixing up the house grew faint. It left behind a feeling of unfinished business, unanswered prayers, unresolved problems. I felt God had failed me somehow.

Last summer the place burned down. To my surprise I felt immense relief at the news. No one was hurt...my parents had been visiting my grandmother at the time. Nothing of great material value was lost or even missed...except perhaps the photo albums, and we gradually began to replace them with the help of friends and relatives. My dad, who had been living practically alone while my mom cared for my grandmother, now moved in with them. Over the months I saw the three older people get used to living together. My grandmother, at 90, seemed to rally in health and spirits with the constant care my mom was able to give her. My parents were together again as they should be. No one was obligated to decide what to do about the old decaying house. God had mercifully decided for us, and He had freed me from the past...several generations of it...to move on to the future.

As I thought over what had happened, I remembered how many of my prayers and thoughts had been expended on that old house, and how during all that time I had forgotten that it was God's. I had made a sort of idol of renewing the old house. He showed me that He has greater things ahead for me in the future, and I must forget the past. He can take care of it, and even through calamity create a better solution for everyone involved.