2 Samuel 9-10

(July 8, 2014)

                Understanding intent is a difficult thing to do.  Here, we find messengers of David – pursuing peace with a pure intent – being ascribed bad motives.  In an attempt to protect themselves, they opened themselves up to the very destruction that they ultimately received.  How often do we do the same thing?  How often are there people who aim to help us or to serve us, but who we reject because we don’t trust them?

                Of course, there are people who we are wise to not trust, and there are those who mean us harm.  But I think that it is important to remember that the majority of people in the world are people who have fought valiantly for the Kingdom of God (even if they don’t remember it now), people who genuinely want to do the right thing (even when they fail), and people worthy of our love and respect.  Yes, perhaps we might need to protect ourselves from time to time, but we should never disrespect our brothers and sisters who might be bearing different burdens and challenges to our own.