It was not a pleasant place. And its inhabitants were not very nice people. Israel called it the Desert of Ziph. Rocky hills pocked with caves, desolate, dry, forbidding. Good only for running for your life.
Which is precisely why David was there. David, God’s choice to be king, was being chased relentlessly by Saul, the king who was no longer going to be king.
As it turned out, the residents of the area quickly let Saul know that David was there, and that they were quite ready to turn him over to the authorities. It was completely wrong. It was not supposed to be.
Have you ever been in Ziph? Not the desert in Judah, but a place where everything works against you, where you feel lost and alone and victimized?
Maybe it’s a place somewhere in the recesses of your mind or the circumstances of your life where God does not even visit. A place where his promises are difficult to remember, his grace hard to sense, his love beyond your grasp.
That is Ziph, as certainly as if you were to walk out into the desert regions of ancient Judah. And that is where, more than ever, more than anything else, you need God.
David had a friend, someone closer to him than a brother who, when he heard where David was, “went to David . . . and helped him find strength in God” (1 Sam. 23:16).
I wonder how. I wonder why this special moment was recorded for us. Literally what Jonathan did for David was to “strengthen his hand in God.”
When Jonathan learned of David’s need, he went to David and joined him in Ziph. I suspect that when he arrived, he extended his own hands first. Then I imagine they embraced. I am reasonably certain they went to God together even as they stayed right there in Ziph. Hand in hand on their knees or maybe on their faces, together they found strength in God. It was part and parcel of their friendship, in good times and in bad.
As we think about and pray for and give to Back to God Ministries International, our efforts are aimed at bringing others to—ultimately, given where we all came from, back to—God. We have been doing that for years. I would like to urge us to do that more for each other also.
There are people among us who are hurting—physically, emotionally, spiritually. They need us to help them “find strength in God.”
There are people among us—and sometimes at a distance from us—who need us not to judge them but to go to them and help them “find strength in God.”
There are people among us who are alienated from the body of Jesus and who need us to extend our hands to help them “find strength in God.”
There are people among us with whom we disagree, sometimes vehemently, and who disagree with us, sometimes as vehemently. We need to extend our hands to help one another “find strength in God.”
There are people we sit beside in worship, people we eat with at the church social, people we serve with on the church council or on a committee, people we live with as part of our family, people we know about through fairly reliable third-hand gossip, people we are concerned about from quite a distance.
They all have hands, and so do we. Our Creator deliberately designed us that way to help each other not only to share God but to find our own strength in him. When we help each other “find strength in God” we will all be closer to one another too.
About the Author
Rev. Joel R. Boot is the executive director of the Christian Reformed Church in North America.
