by Gene Edwards
“Why?”
“An old man, a sage. He wants to meet all eight of the sons of Jesse, and he has seen all but you.”
“But why?”
“Run!”
So David ran. He stopped long enough to get his breath. Then, sweat pouring down his sunburned cheeks, his red face matching his red curly hair, he walked into his father’s house, his eyes recording everything in sight.
The youngest son of Jesse stood there, tall and strong, but more in the eyes of the curious old gentleman than to anyone else in the room. Kith and kin cannot always tell when a man is grown, even when looking straight at him. The elderly man saw. And something more he saw. In a way he himself did not understand, the old man knew what God knew.
God had taken a house-to-house survey of the whole kingdom in search of someone very special. As a result of this survey, the Lord God Almighty had found that this leather-lunged troubadour loved his Lord with a purer heart than anyone else on all the sacred soil of Israel.
“Kneel,” said the bearded one with the long, gray hair. Almost regally, for one who had never been in that particular position, David knelt and then felt oil pouring down on his head. Somewhere, in one of the closets of his mind labeled “childhood information,” he found a thought: This is what men do to designate royalty! Samuel is making me a . . . what?
The Hebrew words were unmistakable. Even children knew them.
“Behold the Lord’s anointed!”
Quite a day for that young man, wouldn’t you say? Then do you find it strange that this remarkable event led the young man not to the throne but to a decade of hellish agony and suffering? On that day, David was enrolled, not into the lineage of royalty but into the school of brokenness.
Samuel went home. The sons of Jesse, save one, went forth to war. And the youngest, not yet ripe for war, received a promotion in his father’s home . . . from sheepherder to messenger boy. His new job was to run food and messages to his brothers on the front lines. He did this regularly.
On one such visit to the battlefront, he killed another bear, in exactly the same way as he had the first. This bear, however, was nine feet tall and bore the name Goliath. As a result of this unusual feat, young David found himself a folk hero.
And eventually he found himself in the palace of a mad king. And in circumstances that were as insane as the king, the young man was to learn many indispensable lessons.
Chapter 3
David sang to the mad king. Often. The music helped the old man a great deal, it seems. And all over the palace, when David sang, everyone stopped in the corridors, turned their ears in the direction of the king’s chamber, and listened and wondered. How did such a young man come to possess such wonderful words and music?
Everyone’s favorite seemed to be the song the little lamb had taught him. They loved that song as much as did the angels.
Nonetheless, the king was mad, and therefore he was jealous. Or was it the other way around? Either way, Saul felt threatened by David, as kings often do when there is a popular, promising young man beneath them. The king also knew, as did David, that this boy just might have his job some day.
But would David ascend to the throne by fair means or foul? Saul did not know. This question is one of the things that drove the king mad.
David was caught in a very uncomfortable position; however, he seemed to grasp a deep understanding of the unfolding drama in which he had been caught. He seemed to understand something that few of even the wisest men of his day understood. Something that in our day, when men are wiser still, even fewer understand.
And what was that?
God did not have—but wanted very much to have—men and women who would live in pain.
God wanted a broken vessel.
About the Author
Gene Edwards was born and raised in east Texas, the son of an oil-field roughneck. He was converted to Christ in his junior year in college. He graduated from East Texas State University in Commerce, Texas, at the age of eighteen, with majors in English literature and history. His first year of postgraduate work was taken at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Ruschlikon, Switzerland. He received his master’s degree in theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas at the age of twenty-two. He served as a Southern Baptist pastor and then as an evangelist for ten years.
Today his ministry includes conferences on the deeper Christian life and on living that life in the context of a practical experience of church life. There have been seventy translations of his books in eighteen languages.
Gene and his wife, Helen, now make their home in Jacksonville, Florida. The author can be reached at the following address:
Gene Edwards
P. O. Box 3450
Jacksonville, FL 32206
www.geneedwards.com
A Tale of Three Kings and its sequel, The Prisoner in the Third Cell, have become modern Christian classics, and readers everywhere have acclaimed The Divine Romance as one of the finest pieces of Christian literature of our time and a magnificent saga that will take your breath away. Here is an incomparable love story told in almost childlike simplicity, yet revealing some of the deepest truths of the Christian faith.
Also in the same genre is the spellbinding story of the history of God’s people . . . as seen by the angels—The Chronicles of Heaven series (The Beginning, The Escape, The Birth, The Triumph, The Return). In addition, The First-Century Diaries series presents the sweeping panorama of the entire saga of the first-century church.
Gene Edwards has written three books that serve as an introduction to the deeper Christian life: Living by the Highest Life, The Secret to the Christian Life, and The Inward Journey. For a complete list of books by Gene Edwards, see the page opposite the title page.
