Scripture: 1 Samuel 22
Reading: Abandonment to Divine Providence Book I Chapter II Section XI
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Here is one of my life lessons:
When I quit giving and started expecting, my joy was lost and I started giving out of pride and ambition in that I sowed to the wind and in turn reaped the whirl-wind. Cambridge Dictionary of Idioms defines that idiom as “to have serious problems because you did something stupid in the past” Hosea 8:1-14 really echos that in the Prophecy listing some very ’stupid’ things Israel had done.
Whether it be Saul, David or myself seems history is going to repeat itself as we all have something in common. Self-love and Self-will that is in constant rebellion against God.
“It is only from want of knowing how to make use of the divine action that so many Christians pass their lives in anxiously pursuing a multitude of methods which might prove useful if ordained by this divine action, but which by preventing a simple union with it, become positively harmful. All this multiplicity fails to impart that which can only be found in the principle of all life, that which is continually present with us, and which stamps each of its tools with a character of its own and makes it work 31with an incomparable fitness. Jesus is sent to us as a Master to whom we do not sufficiently attend. He speaks to every heart, and to each He utters the word of life, the only word applicable to us, but we do not hear it. We want to know what He has said to others and do not listen when He speaks to ourselves. We do not sufficiently regard things as having been supernaturalised by the divine action. We should always accept them with the perfect confidence they merit; with an open mind and with generosity, and be sure that nothing will harm those who act thus. This vast activity, which is in itself ever the same from the beginning to the end of time, is employed with every moment, pouring its immensity and virtue on the souls which adore it, love it, and rejoice in it alone.”
Seems to be such a simple method, but how great a difficulty it is to our very nature. David takes responsibility for the death of the priests, but it was Saul who was the executor of death. Interesting that both are deep in self-love and damnable living yet one is one whom God says is accepted and the other rejected. Seems a divine paradox especially when I consider God’s not intervening for the sake of the innocent. I suppose this is where the divide of the human heart is, that it is in root is that which will be determined by its fruit in its season. O but for the mercy of God to have not cast us into the abyss of Hell as we are born!
Merciful Savior, my True Redeemer and Comfort! Save me O God from the depths of my own wickedness and those disguised wickednesses which cloak as righteousness. Increase my faith that I might see Your Divine Action in all circumstances that lay before me even this day.
