Setting the Stage on any given Thursday
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
The Psalms often have King David in different seasons finding help — no, actively drawing up and stirring up help — from remembering past victories as examples of where God helped him in the past.
Sometimes it's hard to name your own victories to remember.
You might remember a time when…
…but on reflection, perhaps the good was subjective, the outcome arguable, and perhaps not even that big a thing after all.
David's victories are there on the page.
GOLIATH.
immense stature
reputation
armoured
weaponised – sword big enough to cut off his own head
intimidating
5/5
(((And David.)))
a boy
unknown
no - or, no thanks — its uncomfortable and heavy and not mine
slingshot
in this scenario, nah.
1/5, at a push.
That slingshot.
I can't help picturing his days of solitude looking after the sheep in wild open places, getting really handy with it. A bit like a gaming controller — shooting down wild attackers, technology in hand, a first skill developed natively rather than learned from a text book.
Something about that muscle memory merged with his faith and perspective.
Quietly owned confidence.
Doing his thing.
By faith. In God.
Faith and his handheld deadly tool of care and protection becoming attuned.
Faith, Identity. Worldview.
Something about currency.
Everyone's assuming the transaction and outcome is obvious.
Vast aggressive professional warrior.
Child with a stone.
I'm always intrigued by currency. What counts and why. Dimensions of value and transaction. The terms in which reality operates, and the assumptions around that.
But there's something else today.
I think it's distance.
Something about distance.
The distance between
The slingshot needs distance.
If Goliath had been close enough to touch David, presumably it would have been game over. He was, what, 100ft away? 40 metres perhaps? I don't know that of course. Only that it was too far for a sword, yet far enough for the trajectory and velocity of a precision stone to be fatal.
Not too far to see.
Or hear.
Not too far to be affected by the rumours and mocking and contemporary logic of the crowds on both sides.
But perhaps the right distance for muscle memory to kick in, with all its invisible relational context of faith.
That, I think. Hmm.
When Goliath first appears, he is described in Hebrew as an 'ish habbenayim —literally something like "a man of the in-between". The usual sense is a champion who comes out into the space between the opposing armies to represent his side.
Goliath stands in that in-between space.
Owning it. According to him, anyway.
Ruling the roost by his own swagger.
Hyped by his own media.
Striding around, dominating his own stage, claiming that the lack of contenders coming to meet him proves his own point.
Carrying the fate of battle in his hands and calling it in early.
The winner.
No contest.
And that's the common sense version, not only for his side, but for the other side too, and even for the reader of the story on the page.
But apparently not for David.
That distance?
That's the distance that gets man of the in-between killed.
Closer, and Goliaths' actual fighting skills could have taken over.
Further away, and David would need a drone rather than a stone.
But this distance is a slingshot's dream.
… on a tangent, it reminds me of the distance between a viewer in a theatre and the stage. There's a tipping point. The viewer goes too far away, and they can't see or hear a thing, so there's no show. Too close and they're on the stage, messing up the performance, breaking the fourth wall. Again, no show. The tipping point — close enough and far enough away to connect, by way of something like imagination, to a different kind of dimension… themes discussed in my book project, Stay With Me, an Adventure in Going Through It…
For the giant, power is fear that fills a spacious arena with rhetorical assumptions set in motion as truth.
Underwritten by the kind of common sense that sees him standing there as GOLIATH (for goodness sake!) and doesn't need to say another word.
Just read his reviews.
Listen to his talks.
Notice his ratings.
He's monopolised this space, and anything else is a joke.
For the boy, power is — not that.
His faith seeks a simple trajectory that flies freely through the space,
like the stone — through — air — that it is,
rather than like a presumption or a critical deconstruction.
No argument — arguing is the wrong kind of currency.
Just stating his case with conviction, and putting his feet where his faith is.
David's outlandish volunteering looks like a death wish on the face of it.
But he's underwritten by full commitment to — a thought experiment?
(He fully believes it to be more than a thought experiment.)
More than happy to demonstrate something with his life on the line and in full view.
hmm....
That lands.
Landed, I should say.
Because when they were finally within touching distance —
the currency of the sword finished the job.
(He went home head in hands, as they say…)
And so to return to the question of remembering victories, and what to embrace for myself as a borrower of David's story, and committing to that same faith perspective, I'm thinking…
First: that the kinds of things I face day to day involve fear, common sense assumptions, voices of intimidation.
Next: that with time and distance not immediately upon me there is still scope, here and now, to shift currencies and perspectives.
Also: that the thing in my hand — the well-exercised muscle memory that's been building behind the scenes in faith — means there's a story here in the making at the very least. I can't control outcomes, but the same muscle memory applies whatever the weather. Muscle memory — yes this is what's inspiring me the most — is familiarity, intimacy, fluency in relationship with something, someone, who hasn't left. The same stage is still set before me. And, according to the Psalms, King David has many days thereafter when he needs to remind himself that the One he trusted explicitly on that unlikeliest of days still carries him on any given Thursday.
Want to say something back?
If this intrigues you, opens more and more to say, seems a little or a lot off topic, or gives you the urge to let me know another thing as well, I'd be glad to hear from you.
