Facing the Giants

So, if you follow my Facebook page, you'll have seen that I am getting ready to face a rather huge speed-bump today in the form of a Praxis test that needs to be passed in order for me to graduate with a teaching license. 

I don't test well, usually, especially when there's a time-clock ticking out the seconds in which I have to think, so I'm really feeling the pressure this morning. Twenty-one years ago, I dropped the "education" part of my undergraduate degree from my major, mostly because I was terrified of this Praxis. 

So here I am, twenty-one years later, trying again to face this giant, with only slightly less terror.

When I opened my Bible this morning, instead of heading directly to Joshua 7 as I had intended, I went instead to a well-known giant story found in 1 Samuel 17. Most of us know the story of David and Goliath. It's one of the first stories we learn in Sunday School, right? I loved the flannelgraph pictures my teacher would put up on the board: Little tiny David with a sling in his hand on one side, massive armor-clad, javelin-wielding, decked-out Goliath on the other.

When my husband and I were in Ireland, one of the things we did was begin a "Sunday School" for the children of one of the small house churches we worked with, and I have pictures of my husband with one of the kids on his shoulders (to represent Goliath) facing off with one of the youngest children in the group who was less than half of their combined height. The kids loved the story, and we had a lot of fun acting it out.

This morning, I realized that I'm so familiar with this story... that it's actually been years since I've read the original. So I went back to read it.

A quick summation: 9+-foot Goliath is standing on a hillside, backed by the Philistine army, shouting epithets against Israel in general and Israel's God in particular, and demanding that they send a "champion" out to face him in one-on-one battle.

And what does Israel, supposedly God's chosen people, do? Rather than standing on their favored status as God's chosen people, they crouch on the opposite hillside, not one of them daring to go face the giant. 

Until David. Young, handsome, ruddy David shows up on the scene, not expecting to fight giants that day, but whatever. He looks at the giant, takes note of the fact that the giant is insulting the God of Israel, looks around at the cowering army, and wants to know why no one is doing anything about it.

Eliab, David's older brother, who has been passed over to be anointed as king some time back while David was anointed instead and so is likely jealous of his younger brother, comes over, hears David's questions, and taunts him.

David shrugs it off as only David can. "Now what I have I done? Can't I even speak?" And then he ignores his older brother and keeps on asking the same questions, until enough attention is on him that he gets pulled into King Saul's presence.

Saul is familiar with David; David has been employed to play his harp for the king to soothe him sometimes when the king gets depressed or angry. So when David walks in, Saul sees who it is who's been asking questions, and he shakes his head. "You're just a boy. You can't handle the giant."

David yanks out his resume and hands it to the king, pointing to the highlights: Killed a bear with my bare (hehehehe) hands. Killed a lion, and I ain't lyin' (hehehehe). 

Wow. That coffee I drank this morning's really kicked in. ;)

Anyway, so King Saul is reluctantly convinced, and he orders his own tunic put on David. He gives him a coat of armor and a bronze helmet. David straps on a sword over all this, and "tries walking around, but he's not used to them.

'I cannot go in these,' he says to Saul, 'because I am not used to them.' So he takes them off. Then he takes his staff in his hand, chooses five smooth stones from the stream, puts them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag and, with his sling in his hand, approaches the Philistine" (1 Samuel 17:39-40).

As I've been thinking about this giant I'm facing, this test that's been coming up, and especially over the last week, I've dived into what most people would call "cramming." Panic-driven, I've scoured my textbooks and the internet, looking up anything and everything that has to do with what might possibly be on the test, trying to re-memorize things, struggling to prepare, and in the mad rush to do so... I realized I was accomplishing nothing at all. Rather than feeling prepared, I felt confused and weighed down.

I couldn't remember anything I'd spent all this time looking up. I'd glanced over the massive array of "weapons" available to me via Google, ETS, PDFs, textbooks, and more... tried to strap them all on at once... and couldn't move beneath them.

So yesterday, when my mom asked me if I was planning to spend the evening studying, I shrugged. "Nope." 

So, rather than weighing myself down beneath the myriad avenues of too-much-information, I'm going back to my resume. Faced the lion (passed both earlier Praxises), hand-wrestled the bear (4.0 GPA with all my earlier classes and practicums). Neither of which I've done by myself. Both of which I've done only by the strength of the Lord. I'm not that smart, y'all. I have a passing intellect, but the only reason I am where I am is because the Lord has brought me here.

Here's the deal: David wasn't 9+ feet. He didn't carry a bronze helmet on his head or wear a coat of scale armor made out of bronze that weighed 125 pounds. He didn't wear bronze greaves on his legs or carry a bronze javelin on his back. He didn't carry a spear shaft thick as a weaver's rod, and he didn't have an iron spearhead weighing 15 pounds. He didn't have a shield-bearer who walked around with him.

His enemy did have all those things. Goliath was pretty intimidating and huge and overwhelming, and if David had focused solely on what his enemy had, David would have turned tail and run away.

Here's what David focuses on instead. He strides up to the meeting place with Goliath in nothing but his own tunic, a shepherd's bag filled up with five smooth stones, a staff, and a sling. And when the massive giant walks down the hill toward him, taunting him with words like: "Come here and I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field," David says this:

"You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the Name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's, and He will give all of you into our hands."

Zechariah 4:6 says: "'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty." 

David recognizes that the victory wasn't his when he fought the lion or the bear, and he gives credit where credit is due: "The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine."

David recognizes that what happens now has nothing whatsoever to do with armor thickness or spear weight, and so he refuses them. What happens now is solely down to the age-old fight between the enemy and God. And so David stands against the enemy "in the Name of the Lord Almighty -- the God of the armies of Israel..."

And he stands against the enemy in the Name of the same God, Who, I may say, is the God of angel armies (see 2 Kings 6:17, where Elisha prays for his servant to be able to see, and the Lord opens the servant's eyes so that he can see the hills full of the fiery horses and chariots of heaven). 

So whatever test you're facing, whether it's a literal one like the one I'm getting ready to go conquer, or a metaphorical one -- don't focus on armor weight. You're not used to it, and it's going to weigh you down. Focus on this: "All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's, and He will give all of whatever you're facing into our hands."

David hit the giant on the first try, and the rock sank into the forehead of his enemy. Not because he was just that good, but because he stood against the enemy in the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God of angel armies.