Abigail

Abigail

 My dear friends, we must love each other. Love comes from God, and when we love each other, it shows that we have been given new life. We are now God’s children, and we know him. God is love, and anyone who doesn’t love others has never known him. God showed his love for us when he sent his only Son into the world to give us life. Real love isn’t our love for God, but his love for us. God sent his Son to be the sacrifice by which our sins are forgiven. Dear friends, since God loved us this much, we must love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is truly in our hearts. (1 John 4:7-12)

Ernest Gordon groaned in the Death House of Chungkai, Burma. He listened to the moans of the dying, and smelled the stench of the dead. Unrelenting jungle heat baked his skin and parched his throat. If he had had the strength, he could have wrapped one hand around his bony thigh. But he had neither the energy nor the interest. Diphtheria had drained him of both. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t even feel his body. He shared a cot with flies and bedbugs, and awaited a lonely death in a Japanese POW camp.

The war had been harsh on him, to say the least. He’d entered World War II in his early twenties, a robust Highlander in Scotland’s Argyle and Sutherland Brigade. But then came the capture by the Japanese, months of backbreaking labor in the jungle, daily beatings, and slow starvation. Scotland was just a dim memory. And civility? Even dimmer. The Allied soldiers behaved like barbarians – stealing from each other, robbing dying colleagues and fighting for food scraps. Servers shortchanged rations so they could have extra for themselves. The law of the jungle had become the law of the camp. And Gordon was happy to bid it adieu. Death by disease trumped life in Chungkai. But then something wonderful happened.

Two new prisoners were transferred to the camp. Though they were also sick and frail, they heeded a higher code. They shared their meager meals with the other prisoners, and volunteered for extra work. They cleaned Gordon’s ulcerated sores and massaged his atrophied legs. They gave him his first bath in six weeks. His strength slowly returned and, with it, his dignity. And their goodness proved contagious because Gordon contracted their “disease.” He began to treat the sick and share his rations, too. He even gave away what was left of his few belongings. Other soldiers had done likewise. Over time, the tone of the entire camp softened and brightened. Sacrifice replaced selfishness. Soldiers held worship services and Bible studies.

Twenty years later, when Gordon served as chaplain of Princeton University, he described the transformation with these words: Death was still with us — no doubt about that. But we were slowly being freed from its destructive grip. . . .Selfishness, hatred . . . and pride were all anti-life. Love, . . . self-sacrifice . . . and faith, on the other hand, were the essence of life . . . gifts of God to men. . . . Death no longer had the last word at Chungkai.

Selfishness, hatred, and pride — you don’t have to go to a POW camp to find any one of them. A dormitory will do just fine. As will the Board room of a corporation, or the bedroom of a marriage, or the backwoods of a county. The code of the jungle is alive and well. Every man for himself; get all you can, and can all you get; survival of the fittest.

Does that kind of code contaminate your world? Do personal possessive pronouns dominate the language of your circle? My career, My dreams, My stuff. I want things to go My way on My schedule. If so, you know how savage that monster can be. Yet, every so often, a diamond glitters in the rough. A comrade shares. A soldier cares. Or, an Abigail stands in the middle of your trail.

She lived in the days of David and was married to Nabal, whose name means “fool” in Hebrew. He lived up to the definition. Think of him as sort of the Saddam Hussein of the territory. He owned cattle and sheep and took pride in both. He kept his liquor cabinet full, his date life hot, and motored around in a stretch limo. His Lakers seats were front row, his jet was Lear, and he was prone to hop over to Vegas for a weekend of Texas Hold ’em. Half a dozen linebacker-sized security guards followed him wherever he went. And Nabal needed the protection.

He was “churlish and ill-behaved — a real Calebbite dog. . . . He is so ill-natured that one cannot speak to him.” (1 Sam. 25:3,17) He learned people skills at the local zoo. He never met a person he couldn’t anger or offend, or a relationship he couldn’t ruin. Nabal’s world revolved around only one person — Nabal. He owed nothing to anybody, and laughed at the thought of sharing with anyone. Especially with the likes of David.

In those days, David was like the Robin Hood of the wilderness. He and his 600 soldiers protected the farmers and shepherds from thieves. Israel had no CHP or police force, so David and his men met a definite need in the countryside. In fact, they guarded so effectively it prompted one of Nabal’s shepherds to say, “Night and day they were a wall around us all the time we were herding our sheep near them.” (25:16) But David and Nabal co-habited the territory with the harmony of two bulls in the same pasture. Both strong, and stronger-headed. It was just a matter of time before they’d collide.

Trouble began to brew just after the harvest. With the sheep sheared and the hay gathered, it was time to bake bread, roast lamb and pour wine. You know: take a break from the furrows and flocks and enjoy the fruit of their labor. And as we pick up the story, Nabal’s men are doing just that. David hears about the party and thinks his men deserve an invitation, too. After all, they’ve protected the man’s crops and sheep, patrolled the hills and secured the valleys. They deserve a bit of the bounty. So, David sends ten men to Nabal with this request: “We come at a happy time, so be kind to my young men. Please give anything you can find for them and for your son David.” (25:8)

Nabal, however, laughs at the thought: “Who is David, and who is the son of Jesse? There are many servants nowadays who break away each one from his master. Shall I then take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men when I do not know where they are from?” (25:10–11) In other words, Nabal pretends he’s never heard of David, lumping him in with runaway slaves and gypsies. Well, Nabal’s insolence infuriates the messengers and they turn on their heels and hurry back to David to give him a complete report.

David doesn’t need to hear the report twice. He tells the men to form a posse. Or, more precisely, “Strap on your swords!” (1 Sam. 25:12) So, four hundred men mount up and take off. Eyes glare. Nostrils flare. Lips snarl. Testosterone flows. David and his troops thunder down on Nabal – who’s obliviously swilling beer and eating barbecue with his buddies. The road rumbles as David grumbles, “May God do his worst to me if Nabal and every cur in his misbegotten brood aren’t dead meat by morning!” (25:22). In other words, it’s the Wild West in the Ancient East.

Then, all of a sudden, beauty appears. It’s as if a daisy had lifted her head in the desert, or a whiff of perfume had floated through the men’s locker room. Abigail, the wife of Nabal, stands in the middle of the trail. Whereas Nabal’s brutish and mean, she’s “intelligent and good-looking.” (25:3) Brains and beauty. And Abigail puts both to work. When she learns of Nabal’s crude response, she springs into action. And with not a word to her husband, she gathers a bunch of gifts and races to intercept David. And as David and his men descend a ravine, she takes her position armed with “two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep dressed out and ready for cooking, a bushel of roasted grain, a hundred raisin cakes, and two hundred fig cakes, . . . all loaded on some donkeys.” (25:18)

Four hundred men rein in their rides. Some gape at the food, while others check out the chick. She’s good looking and a good cook – a combination that would stop any army. And Abigail’s no fool. She knows the importance of the moment. She stands as the final barrier between her family and certain death. Falling at David’s feet, she issues a plea worthy of a paragraph in Scripture. “On me, my lord, on me let this iniquity be! And please let your maidservant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your maid-servant.” (25:24)

She doesn’t defend Nabal; she agrees that he’s a scoundrel. She doesn’t beg for justice. She begs for forgiveness instead, accepting blame when she deserves none. “Please forgive the trespass of your maidservant.” (25:28) She offers the gifts from her house, and urges David to leave Nabal to God and avoid the dead weight of remorse. Her words fall on David like a hot August sun on ice. David melts. “Blessed be God, the God of Israel. He sent you to meet me! . That was a close call! . . . If you had not come as quickly as you did, stopping me in my tracks, by morning there would have been nothing left of Nabal but dead meat. . . . I’ve heard what you’ve said and I’ll do what you’ve asked.” (25:32–35)

So, David returns to camp with the food, and Abigail returns to Nabal. She finds him too drunk for conversation, so she waits until the next morning to describe how close David came to camp, and how close Nabal came to death. “Right then and there he had a heart attack and fell into a coma. About ten days later God finished him off and he died.” (25:37–38) When David learns of Nabal’s death and Abigail’s sudden availability, he thanks God for the first and takes advantage of the second. Unable to shake the memory of the pretty woman in the middle of the road, he proposes, and she accepts. David gets a new wife, Abigail gets a new life, and we have a great principle: beauty can overcome barbarism.

Meekness saved the day that day. Abigail’s gentleness reversed a river of anger. Humility has such power. Apologies can disarm arguments. Contrition can defuse rage. Olive branches do more good than battle-axes ever will. “Soft speech can crush strong opposition.” (Prov. 25:15)

Abigail teaches us a lot – the contagious power of kindness; the strength of a gentle heart. Her greatest lesson, however, is to take our eyes from her beauty and set them on someone else’s. She lifts our thoughts from a rural trail to a Jerusalem cross. Abigail never knew Jesus. She lived a thousand years before his sacrifice. Nevertheless, her story prefigures his life because Abigail placed herself between David and Nabal, just as Jesus placed himself between God and us. Abigail volunteered to be punished for Nabal’s sins just as Jesus allowed heaven to punish him for yours and mine. Abigail turned away the anger of David. Christ shielded you from God’s. He was our “Mediator who can reconcile God and people. He is the man Christ Jesus. He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone.” (1 Tim. 2:5–6) A mediator is one who stands in between. And Christ stood in between God’s anger and our punishment. In other words, Christ intercepted the wrath of heaven that was aimed at our sin.

Something remotely similar happened at the Chungkai camp. One evening after a work detail, a Japanese guard announced that a shovel was missing. The officer kept the Allies in formation, insisting that someone had stolen it. Screaming in broken English, he demanded that the guilty man step forward. He shouldered his rifle, ready to kill one prisoner at a time until a confession was made. A Scottish soldier broke ranks, stood stiffly at attention, and said, “I did it.” With that admission, the officer unleashed his anger and beat the man to death. When the guard was finally exhausted, the prisoners picked up the man’s body and their tools and returned to camp. Only then were the shovels counted again. The Japanese soldier had made a mistake. A shovel wasn’t missing after all. So, who does that kind of thing? What kind of person would take the blame for something he didn’t do? When you find the adjective, attach it to Jesus.

“God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.” (Isa. 53:6) God treated his innocent Son like the guilty human race, his Holy One like a lying scoundrel, his Abigail like a Nabal. Christ lived the life we could not live, and took the punishment we could not take to offer the hope we cannot resist. And his sacrifice begs this question: If he so loved us, can’t we love each other? Having been forgiven, can’t we forgive? Having feasted at the table of grace, can’t we share a few of the crumbs? “My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other.” (1 John 4:11)

Do you find your Nabal-world hard to stomach? Then do what David did: stop staring at your Nabal and shift your gaze to Christ. Look more at the Mediator and less at the troublemakers. “Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.” (Rom. 12:21)

One prisoner can change a camp. And one Abigail can save a family. So, be the beauty amidst your beasts and see what happens.

Grace,

Randy