Up and down, up and down

Often on these pages I've written with humor, just as often with irritation, sometimes from a place of happiness, sometimes from a place of despondency.

A little while back I wrote about these ups and downs that toss me about, rolling me like a ship on rough seas, like what the statisticians call a "random walk" about a long-term trend (a'la the stock market.)

At the same time, I've reflected on King David and his up and down life, a broken but still hopeful man, who continues to seek after God, while conscious of his own weaknesses and destructive patterns.

I wonder if I can synthesize these two. I read recently on the internet a posting about "the humanness of Peter--how Peter, just like most of us, would go from high to low--from saying You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God to saying I do not know the man. From saying It is good we can see your glory to falling asleep while Jesus prayed. From walking out to Jesus on the water, to trying to stop Jesus from going to Jeruselem and being rebuked by Jesus saying 'get thee behind me Satan'. So if such a man can be used by God as a foundation stone of His church--God can use us all."

The same person wrote that "this idea of duality--good and bad, sin and praise, coming from the same person--maybe that is something that God likes to use. There is a fire in these people that you don't see in the more sedate among us. A passion for life. An ability to live in the now." So maybe passion comes with contradictions, ups and downs, bound to it. Guess I'm stuck with those, then. :)

In this same place this poster was reflecting on a story she heard recently about "the things that keep us from being used and from living life in the joyous now that God wants us to live--Regret, hate, anger, retribution, jealousy, greed. [The pastor] told a story I've heard before, but was happy to hear again as it is no less true. A Native American Grandfather was telling a story about the two wolves who live inside every person. One is full of hate, anger, jealousy, regrets, greed, pain. The other is full of Love, joy, peace, freedom. They constantly battle for the top place in our life. One of the young men listening asks--'Which one wins?' And the grandfather answers- 'Whichever one you feed'."

I have always identified with King David. Not so much with his position, but with his temperament and his gifts and flaws. He was contemplative and melancholy yet hotheaded and idealistic, easily moved yet coldly aloof, a passionate lover and a fearful enemy, a faithful friend and a smooth liar, a poet and a warrior, a thinker and a zealot, musical and bloody, compassionate and ruthless, tenderhearted and vengeful, spiritual and carnal. He was many things, this man.. but what he was *not*, was simple.

And I wonder if, in his later years, David fed the wrong wolf. It seems to me that as he grew up and came into his own, that his trajectory was clearly up. Still a random walk, full of ups and downs, but vacillating around a line steadily climbing toward a life lived well, marked by God's approval and blessing. It's the period when I think David became that "man after God's own heart" as the prophet Samuel called him when he knew God had chosen David as the next king.

Something changed in David's middle years, though. When he was no longer a man on the rise, the warrior tackling a challenge from God's enemies, instead he found himself managing an established kingdom, dealing with adult children, a large household, petty squabbles and affairs of state. Somewhere in there his zeal disappeared and he became less than he was. Then his natural melancholy (which also was what made him extraordinarily tender-hearted and poetic, but always needed to be balanced by his idealism and desire for a noble cause) took over, and the upward-sloping line flattened.

From that point on, after his dear friend Jonathan died, he was banished from the battlefield by his generals for being too old, failed to resolve the crisis with deadly infighting among his adult sons, began his affair with Bathsheba (from which sprang death in his house and Psalm 51), and brought judgment on the nation by taking a census (forbidden in Israel.) His ups and downs swung widely, with seemingly more downs than ups. He was busy writing psalms (beautiful psalms!) while his kingdom and family broke down around him.

I wonder how much of this would have happened if Jonathan had still been there for him, to call him to do the right thing when he was beginning to fail. Instead, the end of David's life was a pitiful picture. A prematurely old man, shivering under thick covers, only able to be warmed by a young girl sharing his bed.. with the real love of his life, Bathsheba, standing by his (and the girl's!) bedside with the prophet Nathan (who had brutally chastised him for his affair with Bathsheba - an odd combination to be sure), trying to rouse him to manhood one last time and do the right thing for the sake of his kingdom.

It worked, he rose one last time, saw to it that Solomon was made king instead of one of his other less worthy sons. But his final instructions to Solomon were like a mafia boss telling his boy who needed to be killed to avenge the family's honor. Bloody gruesome.

Yet, after all that, he pens an auto-biographical psalm to God that is as worshipful and full of thanksgiving as any he ever wrote. He credits God with all the good that happened to him, and takes on himself the blame for all that went wrong. At the end, then, he swung back up - and right on out.

May it be so with me.