Let the Lord Handle It

Our problems, maybe not our solutions

My Bible reading plan had me in 1 Samuel 26 yesterday. Saul is in pursuit of David and, appropriately, David feels under constant threat of death as he travels from place to place, trying to keep is location hidden. Some Ziphites, who don’t particularly like David (see 1 Sam 23:19), report David’s location to Saul—they’re hoping Saul will deal with their David-shaped problem. They know of his hunt.

David decides that instead of turning tail and outright fleeing Saul again—it clearly isn’t going particularly well so far—he will invade his camp. He asks who will go with him, and a man named Abishai volunteers. Abishai is one of David’s nephews.

David and His Saul Problem

The men get to Saul’s camp. Saul and his commander-in-chief (and cousin) Abner are asleep, vulnerable, and in range of attack. Then we read in 1 Samuel 26:8-10:

Then Abishai said to David, “God has given your enemy into your hand this day. Now please let me pin him to the earth with one stroke of the spear, and I will not strike him twice.” But David said to Abishai, “Do not destroy him, for who can put out his hand against the LORD’s anointed and be guiltless?” And David said, “As the LORD lives, the LORD will strike him, or his day will come to die, or he will go down into battle and perish.

Saul is guilty of murder in his heart. He is everything you could ever want in a terrible king. He wants nothing more than to kill David to eliminate the threat he knows David is to his throne, and his constant pursuit of David dominates David’s life every single day.

And here, David has yet another opportunity to kill Saul and take care of this problem once and for all. Abishai pushes him to do it. He even says that God is the one who has given Saul over to David—implying that God is not only blessing, but perhaps even orchestrating this murder that he should totally commit.

Abishai wants David to take matters into his own hands and solve his problem—in fact, Abishai says, it seems that God wants you to take matters into your own hands and solve the Saul problem.

But David says he won’t do it.

David does not think it is right to exact justice on Saul. Instead, David says that he trusts God to take care of Saul for him, one way or the other. It would be wrong for David to murder Saul, even if it may solve the problem at hand.

Maybe We Shouldn’t Solve the Problem Ourselves

I am the kind of person who typically grabs the bull by the horns, gets in the mud, and solves problems as soon as possible—so long as I feel equipped to do so myself. I don’t like to let problems linger. If I see something I think I have the ability to fix, I want to fix it as soon as possible.

That is to say, I see Abishai’s perspective here. I could easily see myself pleading with David in the same way Abishai does.

“I mean sure, David, it’s murder. But he’s like a terrible person, who hunts you every waking hour of every single day. And plus, I mean God literally delivered him to you on a silver platter…AGAIN! How could you not take care of Saul right here and right now?”

But sometimes solving the problem isn’t worth the cost.

As David says, it would be wrong for him to murder Saul, even if it would be justifiable in the eyes of some. He hears the observation Abishai makes about how God may be delivering Saul to him, and he lines that up with what he knows of God and he knows the two don’t align.

David recognizes that not every opportunity to efficiently solve a problem is justifiable before God. Sometimes, as David says, we need to let opportunities to solve our own problems pass before us and trust God to work things out in his ways and in his time.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, it is easy to feel angry right now about all manner of evils in our world—whether they be happening around the globe or around the corner. But even if we were provided solutions to these ills that seem to enact swift justice, those solutions may not be right.

An Oasis or a Mirage?

I think that our technological age, in part, has made it so that we feel like we should be able to solve problems with great efficiency.

Solutions to our problems—obesity (GLP-1s), lack of energy (energy drinks), financial insecurity (gambling and prediction markets)—seem as convenient as ever. But sometimes efficient solutions can sometimes be deceiving. Of course, sometimes these solutions can provide real help, but sometimes they can exacerbate our issues by tricking us with an illusion of a solution—like a mirage of an oasis in the desert.

Because solutions to our problems feel so easy to come by, the persistence of evil on the cosmic- or community-level feels even worse today, I think. When it’s beginning to seem like there’s an efficient solution for everything…what happens when there’s not? We grasp and grope and hope to find a solution that isn’t really within reach at all.

David gives us a good reminder in 1 Samuel 26: sometimes our problems are best given to God in faith that he will act how and when is best. One way or another, David says, God will take care of it.

Sometimes, we aren’t meant to solve our problems even if it seems like God has give us the solution. Sometimes we are meant to let God handle it when and how he will.