Today's Scripture Reading (July 3, 2025): 1 Chronicles 11
Back in Junior High School, I had bodyguards. These bodyguards
were other students who, for some reason, decided that I needed their physical
support. In all honesty, I was bigger than every one of them, but in their
opinion, I was just not mean enough. So, whenever I had a disagreement, or someone made a threat that they would "see me after school," often by
the time after school arrived, there would be three or four guys who considered
themselves meaner than I was, ready to walk with me and fight any fights that
might come my way. Oh, I still got into a few scraps (I couldn't let the little
guys have all the fun), but they were always willing to stand with me.
Almost lost near the beginning of 1 Chronicles as well as at the
end of 2 Samuel is this description of David's Mighty Men. These were the men who
were willing to walk with David and even fight his battles. And on this list of
Mighty Men is one named Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada. Among his many exploits
is a story in which he went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion.
If you have read this passage before, you probably skipped right past the
story. But when you stop to think about it, maybe you begin to wonder who would
do something like that. I am not sure what I would do if I met a lion with
nothing but a sword on a snowy day, but chasing it down into a wet, snow-filled
pit where my footing would be questionable at best would definitely not be on
the agenda. And yet that seems to have been precisely what Benaiah had done.
The text suggests that Benaiah acted voluntarily, and as a result, among other
acts, David appointed him one of his mighty men. Any man who would willingly
chase a lion into a pit on a snowy day was dangerous, and David wanted the men
close to him to be just that: dangerous men to anyone who would stand in the
path of anyone who wanted to harm the king.
As Christians, dangerous is precisely what we are designed to
be. I recently heard some Christians described as being like good vampires. The
intent of the comment was an allusion to some of the good vampires of
literature, vampires who drank just enough blood to stay alive but not enough to
be wholly absorbed into the Vampire lifestyle. For Christians, that means that
we want just enough of the blood of Jesus to be saved from hell but not enough
to make us seem different from others or absorbed in what we might call the
Christian lifestyle. But we were never made for that role. We were all created
to be Benaiah's, so dangerous that the lions of this world will run from our
presence.
We are designed to be the Mighty Ones of Christ. And this world
will never be the same because Jesus is fully in us, and we are fully in the
world.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 1 Chronicles 12
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