Let evil recoil on those who slander me; in your faithfulness destroy them. – Psalm 54:5

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 16, 2019): Psalm 54

It is a childhood chant, heard on almost every schoolyard in existence. “I'm rubber, and you're glue; your words bounce off me and stick to you.” It is the hope of every child. You can’t hurt me. Your words do nothing but reflect who you are. But we also know that the words are also just an attempt to ward off the pain that is being inflicted by another; and a distant hope that things will get better in the future.

The ability to reflect the force of the attacker back onto the one who is pressing the attack might be one of the most coveted, and yet underused, superpowers in the Comic Book universe. In science fiction, the concept is fondly remembered from the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “The Corbomite Maneuver.” To be clear, “The Corbomite Maneuver” in Star Trek was nothing more than a Captain Kirk bluff when everything else seemed to be going wrong. You can almost hear the words “I’m rubber, and you’re glue” emanating from James T. Kirk as he attempts to save his ship. “The Corbomite Maneuver” is just a schoolyard bluff, but still, it would be an impressive ability to possess, or shield to invent.

Long before comic books and the Star Trek, the ability to implement “The Corbomite Maneuver” seems to be the exact superpower that David wishes that he possessed. His prayer is not that God would give him superior power to defeat his enemies, but instead that God would reflect the attack back onto the attacker. He hopes that the evil that his enemies try to do to him will stick, instead, to the ones attacking him.

David believes that this was not his battle And Saul was not really his enemy. He never considered it his job to defeat Saul. In David’s mind, Saul was the anointed of God, and he would not lift his hand against him. Saul was God’s problem. And in the end, Saul could only be removed by the hand of God. David seems to understand that the evil that Saul acted with was the problem. And David refused to act with the same kind of evil that had become characteristic of the king. If evil was going to be visited on Saul, it had to be the evil that Saul also initiated.

And in the midst of all of this, David’s faith is that God will keep him safe. He does not need to bluff; his life was safely in the hands of God. And David needed to know nothing more. Charles Spurgeon writes that “David lived a life of dangers and hair-breadth ‘scapes, yet was he always safe.”

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 1 Samuel 24