Sunday, April 25, 2021, East Village, San Diego, 7:25 pm. A couple walked innocently past a parking structure...when a man hurled himself from the structure, perhaps screaming in his death plunge. The man below jumped aside, either from a premonition, hearing a sound or seeing a form in his peripheral vision. He had no time to pull his 30-year-old wife with him. The suicide smashed into her, driving her under him onto the concrete. Both died. San Diego UT, 4/27/21
Sorry to start the blog with this sad story. But like it, we can never know when we start a walk, a work or a week, that we'll live to finish it. Goliath had that experience in the valley of Elah. Forty days straight, morning and evening, no time off despite his bad behavior, he provoked Israel to tears and terror by brandishing his javelin in their faces from across the valley. On the 41st day, he renewed his taunt. By the time the sun burned hot in the sky, a boy shepherd had hurled a stone that, like the man hurtling into the woman, buried itself in Goliath's skull.... But I'm anticipating.... Sent by his father as errand boy to carry provisions for his brothers and their commander, God summoned David to the site just in time to drop the food, hurry to greet his brothers AND see and hear the Philistine's usual bluster. Surprised to watch otherwise valorous men vanish from the battle line like fog before a rising sun, the boy wondered why. Particularly when overhearing the men plaintively talk to each other about rewards coming from the king to anyone killing the enemy champion:
As older brothers have always done when younger siblings have forgotten their public manners, oldest brother Eliab branded David a smart-aleck, ordered him silenced and sent home to his few sheep, the only role in which he considered him competent. Undaunted by Eliab's anger by a greater awareness of God's call, David simply turned to other voices, who repeated the story of REWARD. It excited the shepherd boy who would never again be unknown anywhere in history. End Part II
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