MAY 17 "WHEN LIFE WAS SIMPLE"

  Our reading today says,  "Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most."  I would imagine David wept the most.  David's life used to be simple. He had a family, he had a job that he loved, he had peace and quiet times out in the field, with God and his sheep, he was quite content sitting out in the fields, writing Psalms to God and watching over that flock that he had been assigned to by his Father.  Life was simple, life was carefree, life was good! David had no aspirations for anything else, but yet God did (look out David!)  This poor, little shepherd boy gets called out of this simple, carefree living into a life of turmoil, hurt & disappointments. He is now very much removed and detached from his family, he is married to a woman who does not at all share his values or his love for God and now he is alone and on the run for his life and I'm sure David thought, "how I long for when things were simple, why God did you not just leave me where I was?".  David has to leave that town, go to another town and turn into a liar, then he must leave that town, go into another town and act like a madman. How degrading this must have been to David to have to act in such a manner. Unfortunately, nobody that has ever given themselves to a life of leisure has ever lived a life worth any mention. Books, movies, mini-series, etc...etc...have all been written about the great King David, not the David that liked to frolic in the fields with his Poetry and Sheep, but the David who was THRUST into greatness by God. Thrust in to a very difficult life, anything but a life of simplicity; yet he accomplished great things and became an ICON of a MAN.

     When things were simple..., oh, remember them days, but what were you accomplishing? Let me answer that for you...NOTHING!  Do you long for the days when things were so simple, but yet God is thrusting you into adversity and great challenges, challenges that if He does not help you with, will consume you? If so, then Thank Him, Thank God today, thank him tomorrow that He will not allow you to waste your life, the one life you have been given on earth, to live for Him. Most people are just living to die, they go to work, sleep, eat, go to work, and are simply wasting away. We need God to thrust us out of our comfort zones, we need God to thrust us out of our simple lives that we have designed. Why do we need him to thrust us out of these scenarios? Because if he did not, we would not and we would end up living insignificant, mediocre existences and He knows that when we would stand before him and give an account for our lives AS CHRISTIANS we would regret that we wasted away opportunity and lived such an unfruitful and uneventful life FOR HIM. Jesus said, "He who saves his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake shall find it". We will only find the true meaning of life when we allow God to take us out of our simple lives that we have put together and allow him to thrust us into raging waters, that is when we will truly experience Divine and sustaining Grace.  In those times you will weep, as David did, you will long for the days of simplicity, but know that one day when you stand before God and give an account of your life, you will not have to be ashamed nor suffer any regret....But David wept the most....