Your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down on me. – Psalm 38:2

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 21, 2016): Psalm 38

Confucius said that “the will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” The idea is that potential is simply not enough. We need the willingness to drive through whatever might stand between us and success if we are going to make the most of the potential that lies inside of us. We all need something that will unlock that door.

Maybe one of the saddest comments that can be made of someone is that they had potential, but never made anything out of it. And as we grow older, the idea of potential becomes an even sadder statement. At some point potential must be realized or it is useless.

Psalm 38 has confused many of the scholars. The problem is one of authorship. According to the inscription of the Psalm, it was written by David. But the problem is that there is nothing that we know of about David’s life that matches up to the words of the Psalm. He speaks of wounds that fester (vs. 5), a back filled with searing pain and that there is no health in his body (vs. 7). His strength fails (vs. 10) and his neighbors refuse to come near because of his agony (vs. 11). When it comes to the physical attributes, there is nothing that we know about David that matches up with the Psalm. So some have wondered if the attribution to David is false. Could this have been written by someone like a Jeremiah and not David?

But the reality is that while there is nothing that we know of in David’s life that matches this kind of physical pain, we know of many instances when there was this kind of searing emotional pain. One instance that comes to mind is the rebellion of Absalom and maybe even the death of Absalom. David’s request had been that his rebellious son would not be killed. But Joab, David’s general, had found the young man hanging helplessly, caught by his head, in a tree that his mule had tried to run under. Joab sent the men away and then killed Absalom, defying the wishes of his king, by sending three arrows through his heart.

It is not a stretch to think that David felt the pain of his rebellious son. The arrows that pierced Absalom had pierced him. The pain that his son had felt, had also been felt by the father. And as David looks at these moments, it is not the arrows that came from Joab that he sees, it is the arrows that have come from God.

But what might have even hurt more is David’s recognition that this is what had become of his own great potential. Maybe the day that Samuel had come to his family and had announced that David would be king was not such a great day. As he watches his family disintegrate around him, he mourns the unrealized potential of his life, and of his legacy as King. David would be remembered as the great king of Israel. But as we read through the story of his life, we realize what David realized – he could have done so much more with the potential that he had been blessed with.       

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 39