“It ain't my fault, ’cause I
Try to get away but trouble follows me
And still I try so hard
Hopin' one day you'll come and rescue me
But until then I'll be posted up
Right here: rain, sleet, hail, snow”
Currently, I’m doing some reading up on the life of David. Yes, the David of the Bible. Giant-slayer David. Now whether you believe in the Bible or not, we can all agree to an extent that we can learn lessons from stories and people’s experiences. So beliefs aside, you should gain a nugget or two if you continue reading.
Trust your gut!
That statement is definitely a “BIG FACTS” statement. Your gut choice or your first instinct is almost always the accurate/best one. Once you have to hesitate or second guess, you should know that something is up or off. Moral code and upbringing tend to play a role here, because it is from that source that your gut tends to pull from. It can sound like your own voice, your mom’s voice or even Tupac’s voice. It draws from that well that is filled up with the principles we’ve been fed.
When David ran into that situation with Bathsheba, I am almost certain his gut was YELLING at him. He was faced with a choice when he initially saw her naked and showering from his rooftop: either to turn away or to keep staring. The Bible suggests he decided on the latter. He was then faced with another decision: To go back to bed and forget what he had seen, or to find out more about the captivating female. Again, he chose the latter option.
Instead of turning away from the vision of beauty, he set out to learn more about her. It was decision time once again. When he found out that Bathsheba was “taken”, he could have either dropped the matter or pursued it. For the third time in just a few minutes, David chose the spiritual low road. This time, it took him out of the realm of questionable behaviour and placed him right in the middle of unquestionable wrong.
I know, I know, we are completely in favour of horning and cheating here on St. Martin, but let's take the lesson here in context. Based on what we know David’s moral code to be, we can expect that in each of those three situations when he made a bad decision, he went against his gut! Like Doctor Strange, he must have gone through 1,000 scenarios in a split second and still he chose the outcome that led to getting someone’s wife pregnant – and followed up that bad decision with having her husband killed. “Bro! You even have a gut?!”
What I’ve realized from personal experiences of late is that our gut or instinct never lowers its voice or stops communicating to us. Life around us just gets really, really loud. It gets hard to hear when we get caught up in the hustle and bustle; and the ebbs and flows of life give us no chance to catch our breath. I can’t say when last I took a good breath, but I have become aware that it is now harder to hear my gut. Awareness is good. Application is better.
Time to silence some noise I guess, lest I find myself on any rooftops…
*Cues I Tried by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony*
