Weighed Down

Saul said to David, "Go, and the Lord be with you."

Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.

"I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

1 Samuel 17:37b-40

Saul, flawed though he was, presented David with his best protection. The royal greatness of the gift was not in the strength of his armor but in the way he gave David his own armor. In the moment of crisis Saul achieved the greatness of treating others the way he wanted to be treated.

In the same way the gift became great -for it was indeed the very armor of the king- it became a liability for David -for it was not his own and neither were David's movements his own while he wore the armor.

The years have gone by but the battles are still in many ways the same. We still argue and quarrel much as they did back them, and we do it with words we ourselves are not used to. They are the words of someone else. We hold opinions that others respect, although we ourselves do not respect them. And our lives have meaning, yes! Rich meaning! But not to us personally. Our lives mean something only to someone else.

David wore the armor, but he took it off because he discovered it was not his own. There was something about it that he was not used to.

Is there anything today that people have not become accustomed to? The heaviness of jealousy can seem light after a while. The calculation of deceit can seem overbearing at first until it becomes second nature. The displays of righteousness seem phony at first until one forgets what it means to know something genuinely.

The armor of the modern world is something we wear to protect ourselves. Other people can see it, but it remains always on the outside and the weight crushes so quietly that we sometimes are completely unaware of it.

The court of appearances -the judgment of which humans have never questioned- was not in David's favor. If there were gamblers in those days as there are now, the betting odds would not be in David's favor. Yet inside he was full of certainty.

The certainty of David was a blazing fire in a company of half-fires and half-certainties. People could see glimpses of it through the way David carried himself on the battlefield, but they only saw someone else's certainty while they remained in doubt.


In melee combat, a major difficulty of fighting with armor was finding the right balance or -as some historians say today- alignment. Like a growing young man who has very quickly become tall, David had difficulty walking in Saul's armor.

In a way of speaking, balance was the skill David was not used to. Perhaps it could be said that David's talent in regard to balance was that he had no talent. He knew only one thing: the power of God, and in David's mind there was nothing that could balance against such a weight.

The absolute-ness of God is commonly understood in our day, we just relate to it relatively. Another practice that is becoming common is to consider God as a relativity and then to hold that belief absolutely. David's understanding of his relation to God was -as the poet writes- an absolute relationship to the Absolute.

Again, human intentions have changed very little. The ones who preach against idolatry are the ones harboring idols. The ones who pray in the streets are not the ones who pray in their closets. The givers of our day are the ones who sell their houses and keep a little for themselves.

But David knew nothing of balancing one part of his life against an opposing and opposite weight. His life was simple, divinely simple. In his way of thinking, he wanted to do only one thing and he wanted to do it with all his heart all his soul all his mind and all his strength.

Prepare us Father so that we too may enter your kingdom like this little shepherd boy. Assist us in making your words our words. Deliver us from the evil of our duplicitous minds. Save us from worldly thinking so that we may present our lives to you as pleasing and acceptable offerings. Amen.