It’s been a few days since I last posted. I’ve either been fighting a cold or hay fever since last week, and it’s hard to tell which. Not to mention the fact that it’s been a slow week for insights as I’ve read the Scriptures.
There have been things here and there, but nothing worth really writing about.
But as I was looking at the two passages listed in the title, I saw a connection there.
Here is David running for his life from Saul. But as he did, he found what the author of Psalm 46 discovered.
God is our refuge and strength,
a helper who is always found
in times of trouble. (Psalm 46:1)
What do we make of what happened to Saul at the end of I Samuel 19? Perhaps it was God’s way of saying to him,
“Stop your fighting, and know that I am God,
exalted among the nations, exalted on the earth.” (10)
God humbled Saul that day. Yet Saul never stopped fighting God.
Had Saul ever stopped struggling against God, he would have found peace. He would have found that God is our refuge and strength. Instead, he constantly lived in fear, sinned greatly because of it, and eventually perished.
As I think back to my last blog, I can’t help but draw parallels between Jacob and Saul.
Like Saul, Jacob struggled to say, “My God.”
Like Saul, Jacob struggled against God.
But unlike Saul, Jacob learned to stop fighting God, and to follow after him. As a result, he ultimately found peace.
How about you? Are you still fighting God, doing things your own way, living only for yourself?
Or do you look at him and say, “You are my God. You are the one I trust”?
If we will do so, we too will find that,
The Lord of Armies is with us;
the God of Jacob is our stronghold. (Psalm 46:11)
