At What Point

Saul's insecurity, the root of his downfall as God's anointed, is an absolute tragedy. If you'll read through his story carefully, you'll see that he had a multitude of opportunities to believe God for even one thing; the fact that He could not seem to believe God for anything is a great caution for the rest of us. 

Saul could have believed God when Samuel, the prophet (and priest), told him plainly that God had chosen him and anointed his head with oil. Hey, Saul, you're going to be king; this is what the man of God has to say about you, so it must be what God says about you. 

If not that, then perhaps Saul could have believed at least that the man of God might be onto something. After all, Samuel also told Saul that the donkeys he was out tracking had already been found and returned home. And, indeed, they had. So if Samuel can be right about donkeys he's never physically seen, how much more should Saul trust the prophet/priest when he has something to say about the man standing right in front of him?

If not that, then perhaps Saul should have noticed that at a moment when he wasn't sure he had anything of value with him, when he hesitated to try to track down the seer (Samuel) because he didn't think he had any worthy gift to bring to receive an insight from God, the servant who was with him scrounged together a very little bit - enough of a little bit to encourage Saul to go and see if the seer would be gracious to them. The fact that he had just enough of a little bit to risk it should have been a sign that God was providing for him. 

The fact that the seer didn't, apparently, require even that little bit from him should have been yet another sign still. 

But at no point in this part of the journey did Saul actually believe God. In fact, he was hesitant to even tell anyone else about it because he just didn't trust it. Which is how it comes to be that when all Israel gathers to actually appoint their king, Saul - the anointed, for whom God has already provided at least 4 times - has to be sought and found, where he is hiding among the luggage. 

You'd think that the persistence of the prophet and the people to keep searching and looking for him until they found him among those bags, then all the cheering that ensued, might have been enough to convince Saul that God really was calling him. But again, no. 

He is anointed king, and then he just goes home. 

God gives him several early victories. Key victories. Decisive victories. He leads Israel into battle against their enemies and comes out absolutely dominant. Which, again, you'd think would be enough to make him at least start thinking about believing and trusting God. But again, no. He is still more superstitious than faithful, as evidenced by his unauthorized offering of the sacrifices when he thinks Samuel is running late. It's not God's favor that is with him; it's the ritual sacrifice that earns him the favor. Right? 

Wrong. 

And so it's here, at Saul's seventh or eighth or ninth instance of just not getting it, of Saul's dozenth time letting his insecurity speak louder than God's voice, that God finally gives up on Israel's first king and pivots toward a young shepherd boy named David. 

And the tragedy, as I said to start this post, is not just that Saul could not seem to believe God; the tragedy is that he had literally dozens of chances to do so and missed every single one of them. If, at any of these points in his story, Saul had just opened his eyes and seen what God was doing for him, in him, through him, and trusted in that, the whole story could have been completely different. 

We read the story in 1 Samuel, and we can't help but think to ourselves - at what point is Saul going to finally get it? And our heart breaks when we realize it could have been really at any point. It just wasn't. 

Tragic.