From Hannah to Abigail - Because Life Is Still Challenging
Blog post by Matt McCoy
10 minute read
Listen to this blog as an audio recording
Life is challenging, and God often uses people who are invisible to us to reveal his kingdom to us.
The life of Samuel walks through this in detail, and I think it’s both beautiful and hilarious that the life of Samuel is bookended by two different women. The story of the birth of Samuel begins with Hannah living into the Kingdom of God and discipling the Priest, and the story immediately after the death of Samuel shows Abigail living into the Kingdom of God and discipling the King. Starting and ending the life of Samuel with similar stories of similar women is such a poignant way to demonstrate the uncommon friendship of God’s Kingdom. I love it!
This week we set down the story of Hannah, and we pick up the story of Abigail.
Both Abigail and Hannah share a common theme:
they both demonstrate how God reveals his kingdom so we can walk together through life’s challenges. And because of that common theme, we have another opportunity to discover how God walks through life with us in the midst of life’s challenges.
I’ll summarize two very important phrases here, but feel free to go back and reread the blog introduction for Hannah if you’d like a fuller explanation.
-Definition of terms-
Kingdom of God
The union of heaven and earth, all around us, available all the time: see Bible Project video. If you don’t have time to rewatch that video, then I’ll just remind you to think of heaven and earth as two overlapping spheres. While our culture might think of earth as close and heaven as far away, the bible depicts heaven as something more like a sphere that is overlapping this sphere of earth, and heaven is coming closer all the time.
Kingdom of My Own Making
When I decide to do things my own way. God doesn’t force us to do anything, but instead invites us to voluntarily give up our inclination to decide good and evil for ourselves. The Bible, and life, is full of examples of people who do their own thing: the toddler who announces “you’re not the boss of me,” the businessperson who claims, “I’m self made,” you and me when we judge, resent, envy and shame. We look at the direction Jesus is walking in, and we choose a different path.
Please notice how the serpent and the fruit all look like Eve. I love how this artist captures the selfishness of a Kingdom of My Own Making.
And, as we learned with Hannah, we can live in the Kingdom of God anytime, because God’s Kingdom is all around us. We also can live in a Kingdom of our own making anytime, because we’re always free to choose to go our own way (and, in fact, we frequently make that choice, which is why we always have a prayer of confession when we gather).
Our Big Idea is that God reveals his Kingdom so we can walk together through life’s challenges .
Guess what?
My life is still full of challenges.
I imagine yours is too. And I’m often tempted to go my own way, to create a Kingdom of My Own Making, when challenges start to pile up. Sometimes I’m tempted to lash out at others, sometimes I’m tempted to run and hide, and sometimes I’m tempted to decide for myself what’s good and what’s not. I’ve been learning so much about this through our Faster Scale small group experiment. In summary, the Faster Scale is a tool developed by people in recovery from drug and alcohol addition, that helps addicts pay attention to the countless small decisions they make before they relapse back into drugs or alcohol. While I don’t struggle with a drug or alcohol addiction, I can get to the point where I can act destructively (the kids call this version of me “crazy Dad”), and the Faster Scale helps me be honest with myself about how I’m actually feeling. You can click here to learn more.
Abigail, like Hannah, is an example for us to follow, because she stayed in the Kingdom of God when life got hard, and she shared it with a very uncommon friend (the future king!).
As you read the story of Abigail, try to identify the challenges she was facing:
1 Samuel 25: 1-35
Samuel died. All Israel gathered together and mourned over his death, and they buried him in his hometown of Ramah. So David got up and headed out for the wilderness of Paran.
There was a certain man in Maon, who worked in Carmel. This was a wealthy businessman, he had 3,000 sheep and 1,000 goats, and it was sheep shearing time in Carmel. The name of the man was Nabal (lit. Fool) and the name of his wife was Abigail. She was very wise and easy on the eyes, he was cruel and mean, his heart had become cynical.
And David sent ten of his young men, telling them, “Go up to Carmel and approach Nabal. Greet him in my name peacefully, and say to him, ‘Peace to you, peace to your household, and peace to everyone and everything here! So I hear that it’s sheep shearing time. Now your shepherds that were with us are here - we did them no harm, and when they were with us in Carmel they never lost an animal. Ask your young men and they’ll confirm this story - so likewise let my young men be on the same page, since they came on a holiday. Please give whatever is at hand to your servants and to me, David.’”
So David’s young men met with Nabal and shared the message on David’s behalf, and they paused. Nabal tore into them, “Who is this David, and who is this Son of Jesse? These days, there are many servants rebelling against their masters. Should I take my bread and wine and prime cuts of meat that I butchered for my shearers, and I give all that to these foreigners?”
Then David’s young men turned their heels and headed back and brought this message, every bit of it, to David. And David replied, “Let’s do it, boys, strap on your swords!” They all strapped on their swords, following David’s lead. About four hundred men set out with David, while two hundred stayed behind to guard the camp.
Meanwhile, one of the young shepherds told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, saying, “Watch out! David sent messengers out of the backcountry to bless our boss, and he tore into them with insults.
But these men were really kind to us, they did us no harm, nothing turned up missing the whole time we were alongside them in the fields. They formed a wall around us, both day and night, the whole time we were out there tending the sheep. Do something now, because evil is at our doorstep, both for our master and for all of us, because he’s such an arrogant jerk! Nobody can talk sense to him!
Abigail flew into action. She took 200 loaves of bread, two jugs of wine, five butchered sheep, nine sacks of roasted grain, 100 raisin clusters, and 200 fig cakes, and loaded it all on some donkeys. Then she said to her young servants, “Go ahead and pave the way for me. I’m right behind you.” But she said nothing to her husband Nabal.
As she rode her donkey, she snuck into the canyon where David and his men were descending on the other side, and that’s where they met. And David said, “It was all for nothing that we guarded this guy’s stuff in the wilderness - nothing was lost from it all - and what does he do? For all the good we did, he pays us back with evil. I would rather God crush me, than me miss my opportunity to crush every one of those pricks by morning.”
As soon as Abigail saw David, she quickly hopped off her donkey and fell on her knees at his feet, and she bowed low, grabbed at his feet and pleaded, “Mine, my master, put the blame on me. Please let me speak to you and listen to my side of the story. Master, please don’t take to heart anything this worthless fool did. As his name is, so is he: Nabal, Fool. He’s an open sewer of Foolishness. For my part, I didn’t see any of those servants you sent. And now, my Master, as the Lord lives and as you live - The Lord who kept you from trying to save yourself by taking revenge through murder - now let your enemies and those who seek your harm end up like Nabal! Now take this gift that I, your servant girl, has brought to my master, and give it to the young men who are walking in your direction with you. Please forgive the crime of your servant, for the Lord is at work in my master, developing a rule solid and dependable. My master fights God’s battles! As long as you live no evil will stick to you.
If anyone stands in your way,
if anyone tries to get you out of the way,
Know this: your God-honored life is tightly bound
in the bundle of God-protected life;
But the lives of your enemies will be hurled aside
as a stone is thrown from a sling.
And so, when the Lord does for my Master all the good things he has promised you, and sets you up as prince over Israel, my master will not have this dead weight in his heart, the guilt of trying to take matters into your own hand by revenge through murder. And when the Lord has worked all this good for my master, remember me.”
And David said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel. He sent you to meet me! And blessed be your good sense! Bless you for keeping me from murder and taking charge of looking out for me. What a close call! As the Lord, the God of Israel, lives, if you had not come as quickly as you did, stopping me in my tracks, by morning there would have been nothing left of Nabal but dead meat.”
Then David accepted the gift she brought him and said, “Return home in peace. I’ve heard what you’ve said and I’ll do what you’ve asked.”
Now let’s take a look at the two big challenges that Abigail was facing:
First, Abigail’s husband Nabal was living in a kingdom of his own making, not the kingdom of God.
His name “Nabal” literally means “Fool,” so I struggle to believe that his mama really named him Nabal/Fool. We don’t know why his name is Nabal: this could’ve been the nickname people gave him behind his back, the author just wanted to make clear to us what kind of character Nabal will play in the story, or maybe something else was going on. But the story clearly points out that Nabal is the kind of fellow who has been very successful in business and thinks he can now live life on his own terms (and to do so is foolish). His life is a clear and holistic example of ‘living in a kingdom of his own making’ as he goes through this story doing whatever seems right in his own eyes. Interesting how our culture is also full of people who are successful in business and also feel like they can go and do whatever they want (and to do so is foolish).
Putting ourselves in this story as Nabal:
Have you ever been successful, and then thought that your success gives you permission to do as you please?
We can widen the scope of this question to simply ask about entitlement: Do you feel like you deserve to get what you want? On the international front, have we noticed that we have an abundance of vaccines for the coronavirus while there are millions of people who are still waiting for their first shot? On the domestic front, a simple question to sit with might be:
How do we feel when our convenience gets diminished?
Second, David, the future king, was living in a kingdom of his own making, not the kingdom of God.
In this particular story, it’s Abigail who reminds David that living in the Kingdom of God means not taking revenge against the foolish (verse 31 and verse 33), but David had become filled with rage and wanted to take matters into his own hands. V. Phillips Long observes that “David is shown to be a fully human, flawed individual, as capable of any of falling into a fit of rage when insulted and slighted. But, as the narrative repeatedly reminds us, the Lord is with David, and it is the Lord, through the agency of Abigail, who rescues David from his own baser instinct to exact personal revenge.”{1} Interesting how our culture is also full of people who have been hurt by the foolish, and want to exact their own revenge.
Putting ourselves in this story as David:
Have you ever had to suffer because of people who were acting foolish, and wanted to take your own revenge?
Maybe it’s a big revenge like David, and we want to harm another. Maybe it’s a small revenge, and we withhold, we hide, we post snarky comments, or we somehow behave as though we don’t trust God with that person or that situation.
How do we find a way out of this mess?
For both Nabal and David, God used someone invisible to them in order to disciple them: Abigail. God used the invisible Hannah to disciple Eli the priest and God used the invisible Ruth to disciple the town of Bethlehem. This theme of Uncommon Friendship (God using people invisible to us) and Common Discipleship (walking in the direction Jesus is walking in) keeps coming up, doesn’t it?
Nabal did not listen to Abigail, and so he chose to stay in a kingdom of his own making. David repented when he heard from Abigail, and so he stayed in the kingdom of God.
And so, then as now, God’s kingdom is better than a kingdom of my own making. I wonder which invisible people God will use to disciple us as we live into this story together over the next few months.
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