https://open.spotify.com/episode/4VLgiURoBhy5VDHvWpwOa9?si=DD3dqDmxQaS0pU1ysjs_pw

From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself.
1 Samuel 18:2-3 (NIV)

I had a long-time friend. We walked a lot of life’s road together. As time wore on, however, I noticed a strange dynamic in our relationship. Whenever I experienced a win in life, my friend experienced a sense of diminishment. He wasn’t experiencing the same type of wins, and my success became a mirror in which he felt loss.

I am no stranger to envy. In fact, it’s one of my core struggles as an Enneagram Type Four.

I know what’s like to feel like there’s something wrong with me. If others experience success it’s easy for me to feel like there’s something right with them that’s missing in me.

So, I totally understood my friend’s own sense of envy and shame. But, the dynamic eventually began to wear on the relationship. It became an unhealthy cycle. This was early in my life journey and I didn’t have the experience or wisdom to see it or to address it in a healthy way. The relationship eventually waned.

I thought about this friend as I read today’s chapter. David has been anointed king, but he’s decades from the throne. His victory of Goliath kick-started the path to success — but that path leads straight through the household of the man that David is going to supplant. And it’s a dramatically dysfunctional brood.

Saul, the success-grasping, mistake-diminishing, self-aggrandizing king is a mental health mess. He’s already got an established history of deep depression and fits of rage. When he hears his peoples’ praise of David’s victory it triggers jealous rage. David is already in his service as a court musician — specifically to play when he’s in a funk. Now, instead of David’s lullabies calming the King, it twice prompts Saul to try and murder the kid with a spear. As the toxic jealousy and envy slowly takes over, Saul begins to plot David’s destruction.

But Saul’s own children? They love David.

Jonathan is a total contrast to his father. Jonathan feels no envy whatsoever — despite the fact that David could easily be seen as a rival for his position and inheritance. Jonathan is shining example of humility and love in contrast to his father’s envy and jealousy. He celebrates David and his successes. He is happy to set aside his own pride and desires to help his friend in any way he can.

And then there’s Saul’s young daughter, Michal. She’s infatuated with the handsome young shepherd boy and his meteoric rise to fame and fortune in her father’s service. Daddy tries to leverage his little-girl’s crush into a plot to have his rival killed. Once again, David overcomes the trap and succeeds against the odds.

Saul’s bitter rival and lowly minstrel is now a member of the family.

Fasten your seat-belts. Everyone is in for a bumpy ride.

This, however, is an important part of David’s journey. A struggling slog through the wilderness is a part of every hero’s journey.

Moses had Midian.
Bilbo Baggins had Mirkwood.
Harry Potter had the Forbidden Forest.
Luke Skywalker had Dagobah.

David will eventually have the desert and the Cave of Adullam, but his wilderness journey begins in the tangled forest of family dysfunction inside a mad king’s household.

Every individual I know — even the most successful — have had their own wilderness experiences. It’s a spiritual principle that God wove into creation and the realities of this fallen world. Spiritual maturity and wholeness are not granted by God as a gift. They are forged through trials, tribulations, challenges, struggles, and the time required for all these ingredients to bake themselves inside my heart and life in such a way that a casserole of faith, perseverance, hope, and spiritual maturity come out of the heat of life’s oven.

And in the quiet this morning, my mind wanders back to my old friend. Looking back, I see an image of Saul in his spirit at the time — unraveling in envy and jealousy rather than rising to the challenge of learning humility. I’m sorry I was not a place of maturity to address it and assist at the time. But, we all have our own personal journeys.

Paul wrote to the believers in Philippi that he was confident that God would continue to do His good work until it was completed. I’m equally confident that God has continued to do His good work in my friend’s heart and life journey. He is on his own spiritual journey with God. I was simply called upon to play a small part in that journey for a season.

And that’s the reminder taking into my day. God is at work in every person’s life and journey.

Mad King Saul is on his journey.
Jonathan is on his.
David is on his.
Michal is on hers.

And, I’m on my own journey of Life and Spirit — the one for which I alone am responsible.

Lace ‘em up. Time to press on another day in the wilderness.