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We live in a highlight culture. Thanks to ESPN we don’t need to watch the whole game; we can just catch the best plays on Sportscenter. Thanks to YouTube we don’t have to watch the entire movie; we can just watch the most dramatic scenes and get the best quotes. Thanks to Twitter we don’t need to read the full story, we can just get the headlines. In our culture, the highlight reel is made to be significant while what happens in the meantime is deemed much less important. What if, with God, this is actually inverted?
You know we tend to think that what happens in the meantime of our lives is not as important as the highlights. So we go from highlight to highlight without giving much value to the more trivial things in life. It’s as if we are enduring the ordinary moments just to bide our time until the next extraordinary moment happens. But we need to understand that what happens in the meantime of our lives, where ordinary, daily life happens, is vitally important to God. Because that is where our character is shaped most.
See it is healthy for us to slow down, pause and reflect, and stop asking, “What am I accomplishing?” and start asking, “What am I becoming?” The highlight reel of your life reveals your successes and accomplishments. But what you do with the meantime, the trivial, the commonplace, and the ordinary days, determines who you are becoming.
In God’s Word we get a hindsight perspective of the importance of the meantime. In 2 Samuel 5:1-10 we see an epic highlight in David’s life. At 37-years old, he becomes king over all of Israel. But it’s important for us to know the rest of the story—to understand the meantime in David’s life. While in middle school, David is anointed by Samuel to become the next king of Israel. Then in high school he slays a giant named Goliath. That was the first installment of David’s highlight reel. It was all over ESPN and the YouTube video went viral. He becomes a mighty warrior in King Saul’s army. All the people begin to sing songs about David’s courage, his heroics, and his glory. He is well on his way to becoming what Samuel had prophesied over his life: Israel’s next king.
But things start to turn bleak. Instead of getting closer to becoming king, he seems to be driven further from his calling. Threatened by David’s popularity, King Saul becomes jealous of David and makes it his personal mission to destroy Israel’s up and coming hero. David is driven into obscurity for two decades as he moves around from cave to cave, running from this madman who wants to kill him. Friends betray him. His enemies gloat over him. Some people are afraid to associate with him because it might jeopardize their lives or ruin their reputation. This becomes the meantime of David’s life.
While in a cave, David wrote Psalm 142, which echoes the meantime of his life: “In the path where I walk they have hidden a trap for me. Look to the right and see: there is none who takes notice of me; no refuge remains to me; no one cares for my soul.”
Have you ever found yourself in that kind of loneliness, pouring your heart out to God?
See many archaeologists believe that the Cave of Adullam was not too far from the place where David defeated Goliath in the hills of Judah. From the cave, he may even be able to see the valley in which this great feat took place. But this was just an antiquated memory now. David had come a long way from the Valley of Elah where that incredible heroic took place. Now he’s living like a fugitive—a refugee hiding in a cave. Maybe he begins to doubt his calling—that which Samuel had prophesied over his life. Maybe he struggles with his faith in God. He remembers back to the day when he was a giant slayer, a renowned warrior, and everyone was singing songs about him. And now he’s isolated in a cave. It appeared that David was getting further and further from his calling, when in actuality it was an essential process in his calling.
The cave was the most ordinary and mundane period in David’s life but it was also where he experienced the most pruning—that character shaping business that God is really big on. The cave is where God strips us of all self-sufficiency and endows us with His sufficiency. The meantime has great importance to our lives. It’s where our character and faith is shaped the most. What we do with the meantime dictates whether our lives will be defined by worship or whining. Whether we will grow or become bitter.
C.S. Lewis said, “We ought to give thanks for all fortune: if it is good, because it is good; if bad, because it works in us patience, humility, contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.”
A.W. Pink beautifully described David’s meantime when he wrote: “It would have been a simple matter for God to have put forth His power, destroyed Saul, and given His servant rest from all his foes. And this, no doubt, is what the energetic nature of David had much preferred… Though we are impulsive and impetuous, God is never in a hurry; the sooner we learn this lesson, the better for our own peace of mind, and the sooner shall we ‘Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him’ (Psalm 37:7)… Though God’s delays are trying to flesh and blood, nevertheless they are ordered by perfect wisdom and infinite love. ‘For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come’ (Habakkuk 2:3).
Your meantime matters! As you abide in Him today, remember that God does some of his best work in caves.
God does some of His best work in caves. Caves remind us that what we are becoming is more important than what we are accomplishing.
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