When things go wrong

David had a lot of good things in his life but he also had a lot of things go wrong. He spent time on the run from Saul and then later on the run from his own son Absalom. That's a lot of time on the run.
His first son with Bathsheba dies. While the son is sick and dying he fasted and wept, pleading for the life of his son. Hoping that "the Lord might be gracious to me and let the child live"(2 Samuel 12:22)
On the second time on the run, some guy (Shimei) comes out and curses David. Members of his party want to kill Shimei (that would silence him!) but David's attitude is that God told Shimei to curse him, so he needs to take it and "It may be that the Lord will see my distress and repay me with good for the cursing I am receiving today" (2 Samuel 16:12)
So when bad things happen, he does not retaliate, just takes it on the chin and hopes that God will dole out the justice for him. Often we think we need to take justice into our own hands, but that was not David's attitude.

A gift that David receives while on the run the second time is that Ziba (a servant of Saul's grandson, who has seen David be good to the grandson) brings him a "string of donkeys saddled and loaded with 200 loaves of bread, 100 cakes of raisins, 100 cakes of figs and a skin of wine" (2 Samuel 16:1) This would have been a lot of time, effort and expense for Ziba. Are we willing to put time, effort and expense into people like he was?

The quote that I am pondering after this weeks' reading is from 2 Samuel 14:14:

14 Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But God does not take away life; instead, he devises ways so that a banished person may not remain estranged from him.