Decline, disillusionment and danger: three words of our times.Decline? People are living in a world with no stuffing, a societyin decline—and they feel the life running out of them.Disillusionment? Nothing works. Nothing will change. No one meanswhat he says. Danger? We are worried sick about unemployment andso terrified of AIDS that we burn down the houses of schoolchildren. Elderly urbanites die of heat suffocation, afraid toturn on the air conditioner lest they cannot pay the bill, andafraid to open the windows lest they be robbed. How do we findthe heart to go on?

Those same three conditions—decline, disillusionment anddanger—also marked the times when David stepped from thepastures to the palace. Decline. In those days the Hebrew peoplewere descending the lower slopes of long spiritual and socialdecline. Joshua and Moses were forgotten. The public conscienceseemed numbed by the lust-driven religions of Canaaniteneighbors. After three hundred years under an assortment ofjudges, pure chaos prevailed. "In those days there was noking in Israel: every man did that which was right in his owneyes" (Judges 21:25 kjv).

Decline fed disillusionment. Leader after leader began well andended badly. The fans screamed for a new quarterback and gotone—but Saul, "the people's choice," turned out tobe a psychotic and murderous blunderer.

Decline and disillusionment were surrounded by danger. From theAegean Islands, a warlike maritime people had migrated to thecoastal plain of Palestine. These Philistines established fivecity-states, ruled by five shrewd and bloody princes. Theirbooming economy was capped off by a monopoly on iron andblacksmiths. Israel had only bronze and wood.

The plains trembled under thousands of thundering Philistinechariots; wheels armed with spinning swords were capable ofcutting down whole Israeli divisions, like mowing grass. ThePhilistine infantry must have resembled mobile forests of steelas weapons flashed in the desert sun. The Israelites, on theother hand, were armed only with slings, arrows, assorted farmtools, a few knives, and instruments of bronze. In fact, at onepoint, in all the hosts of Israel only two warriors wielded ironswords: Saul and Jonathan (1 Samuel 13:22). Even the deadlyaccurate Israeli arrows could not pierce the metal Philistinearmor.

Israel's hosts huddled on the hillsides in terror, watching theawesome panorama unfolding on the Philistine plain. No doubtstark panic spread across the camps of Israel, tugging at thetent flaps and tightening throats. Finally, the filthy paganenemy massacred much of the ragtag Hebrew army and carried thesacred Ark of the Covenant, the very dwelling place of God, intothe land of the Philistines.

Decline. Disillusionment. Danger. The time was right for God tointervene and to make His choice (1 Samuel 13:14). Our man Davidwas given the nod of God—but why?

Many know King David only for his bright hour with Goliath andhis dark hour with Bathsheba; yet the Old Testament usessixty-six chapters to unfold his saga. The New Testament mentionshim no less than fifty-nine times, and only God knows how many ofthe psalms flowed from David's pen.

Millions of birth certificates of all races bear the name Davidor Davita. Novels, poems, paintings and movies about David touchall continents. Fluttering over every flagpole in the independentstate of Israel is the Star of David. And in Florence, Italy,every day, people from all over the world pay money and wait inline to see a fourteen-foot marble colossus, shaped four hundredfifty years ago by the twenty-six-year-old hand of Michelangelo,depicting the spirit of David.

Such legendary proportions are misleading, for they balloon Davidlarger than the flesh-and-blood reality portrayed in Scripture.

David was not a "biblical character." There are nobiblical characters. The people in the pages of the Bible wereordinary human beings like you and me, who just happened to bearound when the Bible was being written. David is no different.In fact, the human spirit resonates so universally with the heartof David precisely because he was a street-level, earthy man. Itis not his gargantuan mythological proportions but the plainprofile of his humanness that makes David "the man for allmen."

How will this give me the heart to keep going?

Read on!

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Excerpted from The Shepherd's Song: Finding the Heart to Go On by Lynn Anderson
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.