Saul and his Lexus

Morning!

I have just been reading about the interesting testosterone-fuelled dynamics between Saul and David in 1 Samuel 18:1-16. I felt a surge of blogging creativity come on so I thought I would share my thoughts.

Basically Saul has become jealous of David. David is brilliant in battle, Popular with the people, his son Jonathan, the ladies, and, probably the most important, God!  Poor Saul. He was once hot favourite and now he has been usurped in the popularity stakes across the board, even by the Almighty himself (not without reason, if you look at earlier chapters....)! Saul has developed a classic case of "Small Man Syndrome". I've often thought that if he lived in modern day times he would be bombing around in one of those incredibly ostentatious Lexuses, perhaps in a garish orange or yellow with a personalised numberplate.

I think we have all identified with Saul at some point in our lives.  He is feeling a genuine human reaction.  At some point, no matter how good we are at something, or how popular we are, there is always going to be someone who comes along who is better than us. Even in the Christian church there is a celebrity culture, and we often look at people with an "anointing" or certain gifts, or a charismatic personality who is flavour of the month, and after a while the focus is switched to someone else.

So how do we cope when that happens?  When we feel threatened by another person's "success"?
I think that when we feel threatened that signals that something is wrong.  Because that shows us that we have tried to meet our core spiritual needs (the need for significance security and self-worth) in something other than God himself, who loves us unconditionally.

There is a lovely song called Nature Boy; made famous in the olden days by Nat King Cole, and again by the rather dashing Ewan McGregor in the film Moulin Rouge. (It has also got some amazing jazz chords in it!) Here is a version my the fabulous Ella Fitzgerald:



There is a line in it that says:  The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is to love and be loved in return.

For us it is the other way round:  The greatest thing we will ever learn is that we are loved. Then we can love in return.

I reckon that if Saul had ditched his Lexus and his jealousy, and gone to God and received his unconditional love, then he wouldn't have ended up in the mess that he ended up in. And he and David could have been great friends:  they could have celebrated one another.

And at some point or other in our lives we need to do the same.  For me it is all the time! Often I find myself putting my sense of self worth in what I do rather than the fact that I am His.  What is the Lexus in your life?  Lets all ditch our Lexuses and go back to our Father's unconditional love. Because we are all loved and special.

Have a lovely day
Hils