April 3 ... I Samuel 25 - 27 "ALL IN....A Cry for Holiness"

I Samuel 25: 18-19 Picture #1: Abigail flew into action when she heard that her husband Nabal had hurled insults at David's men. Abigail took the blame for her husband Nabal, the fool.  Not mentioning anything to Nabal, Abigail took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep dressed out and ready for cooking, a bushel of roasted grain, a hundred raisin cakes, and two hundred fig cakes, and she had it all loaded on some donkeys. Okay, did they have to bake the 200 loaves of bread and 200 cakes?  She had 5 personal servants but still this is a lot of work to pull together all this quickly.  What did the fast job amount to?  A husband like no other.  Abigail did what she could to love her own foolish husband.

I Samuel 26:3 Picture #2: David, still out in the backcountry, knowing Saul had come after him. His scouts find Saul and confiscate spear and jug from a slumbering Saul.  I Samuel 26:9 - Don't you dare hurt Saul! "Who could lay a hand on God's anointed and even think of getting away with it."  That's the attitude I want to have when people who are made in the image of God insult me, as it happened this very day!!  I Samuel 26:24 says:   It's God's business to decide what to do with each of us in regard to what's right and who's loyal.

I am so taken with how David and Abigail loved.  They didn't gloss over the wrongdoing and they called it what it was.  Truth.  Yet, both God followers chose to love those closest to them who were fools.  They didn't walk away.  They didn't keep silent.  They stayed close, "ALL IN."  Jesus died for them to have the power to change their motives from self-protection to selfless love. What would it look like to love those in our lives this day who are conniving and cunning and coy?  Those difficult husbands.  Those finger-pointing relatives.  Those fickle friends.  "Owe no man anything except to love him." -  Romans 13:8. 
And, what happens if you really love?  "You will hear yourself weeping over how you demand that I cooperate with your agenda, and you'll hear the cry for holiness arising from your deepest center."  66LL