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I’m often fascinated by Abigail in the story of King David. If you don’t know her background, quick sumup is she was married to a rich doofus named Nabal who tried to stiff David on some back pay. David gets ready to teach him a lesson, Judean wilderness style, but Abigail intervenes with food and some straight-up flattery of David, and he decided to forgo his revenge. When Nabal finds out, he promptly has a stroke and dies, after which David marries Abigail.
This story is always interesting to me because of the Maybe’s. Abigail was described as beautiful and intelligent, so right away we know she’s all that and a bag of chips. She’s clever, and yet remains loyal to her chumpweasel of a husband despite his stupidity and foolishness.
So here’s the Maybe’s – what if David had just married her and none of his other wives? Sometimes David’s story is seen as God’s blessing on polygamy, but what if it’s more of a warning? Abigail is probably David’s first wife (there’s some dispute here with Michal and Ahinoam, so I won’t be dogmatic about it), and she appears to be the one he married with the purest intention. Most of the others were either political marriages (that David used to solidify his claim to the throne) or flat-out wrong (Bathsheba).
Many of David’s problems later in life were a result of the in-fighting within his own family. What if David had just married Abigail, and trusted God for the political strength? Maybe there would be no Bathsheba. Maybe there would be no Tamar and Amnon, Maybe there would be no rebellion from Absalom. Maybe maybe maybe.
I think often we create a lot of problems for ourselves by trying to solve problems that wouldn’t even be problems if we just followed God’s leading. We worry ourselves sick worrying about getting sick. We create fights with people because we worried that they are thinking bad about us. We create the the very situations that we have to focus our time on.
What if we instead just focused on following Christ, and let the problems come as they will? What if we just spent each day actually being with Jesus, instead of worrying about what tomorrow might bring. Could it be that the thing we are worrying about might not actually happen at all? If David hadn’t been worried about losing his throne, he might never have had to fight for his throne later on.
What problems might you be creating today in your effort to outplan God?