Don’t Fear the Giants

Imagine for a moment that you’re David, out in the field tending your flock, when suddenly you’re brought in to meet the prophet Samuel. He pours oil on your head and says you’re the next king of Israel. You receive no crown. You find no chariot with Secret Service protection waiting. So you go back to your flock of sheep, and everything goes back to normal.

I wonder if a lot of the psalms David wrote came to him as he was tending his sheep. I wonder if maybe one day he started thinking about how dependent those sheep were on him—how he even needed to take them to the stream to drink. And maybe this came to mind: “The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need. He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams.”

Then one day David’s father sent him to visit his brothers on the front lines with Israel’s army. The Israelites were facing off with the Philistines in the Valley of Elah, where an oversized man named Goliath was taunting Israel’s army every day. Everyone was terrified, including David’s brothers and King Saul.

David asked, “Who is this pagan Philistine anyway, that he is allowed to defy the armies of the living God?” Then he told Saul, “Don’t worry about this Philistine. I’ll go fight him! . . . The Lord who rescued me from the claws of the lion and the bear will rescue me from this Philistine!” (1 Samuel 17:26, 32, 37 NLT).

Fast-forward to the end of the story, and we find David taking Goliath down with a sling and a stone. David was looking at his giant in the light of God. He wasn’t looking at God in the light of his giant.