Psalm 17 and Psalm 35 are today’s assignment in the PBJ. These prayers of David are sandwiched between David winning Abigail as his wife and Saul seeking the witch of En Dor.
Abigail
Abigail is awesome. Had I been writing this as a tale of battle and romance, I would have stopped there. Abigail is awesome. Yet, we have some things in David’s future… Bathsheba… Being crowned as King…
Saul and Nimrod
What I find so fascinating is the story we will read in a few days about Saul approaching the witch of En Dor to plead through her to the spirit of the Judge and Prophet, Samuel. Up to this point, King Saul has walked the path walked by every dictator from humility to tyranny. It is already such a well worn, known path and reaches back to the tower of Babel and Nimrod. It’s fascinating that history knows Nimrod as Gilgamesh. Recorded in stone as a King of Kings. Even Wikipedia describes the glorious Gilgamesh. Oh, how we humans love our tyrants.
Causality and Symmetric
All of us grew up in an age of causality. If this, then that. With the advent of the Internet, smart phones, smart devices, we are stepping into an age of correlation. That is a transition from Symmetric to Asymmetric. But that should not be anything new.
Flawed Attempt
Saul sees the disaster coming to him and his Kingdom. The Philistines are on the rise and his own people are fragmented. His tyranny is perhaps most on display in his unjust pursuit of the life of David. Then he attempts something very Asymmetric. In approaching the witch of En Dor, Saul steps out of time present, pursing the spirit of a dead man. God left him long ago, and his access to the asymmetric is flawed and feeble, at best.
David is Asymmetric
In remarkable contrast, we have David pursuing the Asymmetric and Awesome God of Creation. His prayers and Psalms comprise most of the Psalms. In that pursuit, David discovers something that is timeless. Something that is not locked up in the causality of time present. Our choice is clear. We can stagger into the dark asymmetry of the witch of En Dor, discovering death, or we can walk toward the Asymmetric light of a living God, creator, savior, and Lord of the Universe. David choose the light.
Adjacent Possibilities
The amazing result is that God used David to build something called Adjacent Possibilities in the Kingdom that became real in time present. For Saul, the end is near, and he will take his nation into disaster. Every time we pray, call on the Lord, we are being Asymmetric. We are asking the God of Correlation from beyond space time to battle for us. Nothing is more powerful or asymmetric. David knew this thousands of years before the Internet and Smart phones.
Inman
We grew up in an age of Causality. We now live in an age of Correlation… That’s nothing new in the Kingdom.
I Used To be Cool ?
Building Adjacent Possibilities in the Kingdom