God Discerns the Possibilities

Then Ziba said to the king, “Your servant will do whatever my
lord the king commands his servant to do.”—2 Samuel 9:11

Jonathan, the son of King Saul, had a son whose name was Meribaal. He
was five years old when news of Jonathan’s death came from Gilboa. His
nurse, expecting the Philistines to overrun the citadel, snatched up the child
and fled, but in her panic she fell and the child was severely injured. As a result,
he “became crippled,” the beginning of a tortured, melancholy life. His
humiliation was so deep that his name was changed from Meribaal (“The
Lord Is My Advocate”) to Mephibosheth (Mephi means something like “My
Brokenness” and bosheth means “Shame”).

“We shouldn’t take names to ourselves,” Tolkien’s Frodo said to the
self-pitying creature Sméagol. “It’s unwise whether true or false.” But
Mephibosheth couldn’t avoid the name change. He thought of himself as a
ruined man, and in all his utterances he speaks as a weary, dispirited soul.

Some years later David recalled an oath he had sworn to Jonathan: “Show
me unfailing kindness like that of the Lord as long as I live . . . and do not
ever cut off your kindness from my family . . . And Jonathan had David reaffirm
his oath out of love for him” (1 Samuel 20:14–15, 17).

David determined to keep his word to his dear friend, so he asked Saul’s
old servant, Ziba, if any of Jonathan’s descendants still lived. “Oh, yes,” Ziba
replied. “One of Jonathan’s sons is still alive, but he’s crippled in both feet.”

David immediately had Mephibosheth brought to him from exile
(Mephibosheth was living across the Jordan, far from the family estate and
David’s court) and welcomed him into his presence.

“Mephibosheth!” the king cried with joy when he saw the son of his old
friend.

“Your servant,” Mephibosheth replied as he fell to his knees, thinking that
David would surely kill him. (It was the custom in other cultures then to kill
all presumptive heirs to the throne.)

But David said, “Don’t be afraid, Mephibosheth. You will eat at my table
for the rest of your life.”

We see our story in Mephibosheth’s. As David himself put it, this is “the
love of the Lord.” (The word kindness in 2 Samuel 9:7 is “covenant love,” the love God has for us.) God does not say, “Learn to walk well, and I’ll take you in.” He loves us as David loved Mephibosheth—as is. We stagger and falter, we stumble and fall; yet He receives us and invites us to eat at His table.

Our decision to come to Him may be nothing more than the desperate
culmination of a lifetime of failure. We may have struggled so long with our
fallen and failed nature that we’ve given up. But God does not despair of
us even when we’ve despaired of ourselves. “He is eternal,” Augustine said,
“therefore His love endures forever.”

Some of us are so broken that our personalities resist change. Yet God
discerns the possibilities in the most damaged life. He can take all that’s
unworthy in it and, as it pleases Him, gradually turn it into good, though for
reasons known only to God, some of us may glorify Him for a time through
our brokenness. Some of us are so handicapped that complete healing awaits
heaven’s cure. Yet we can be assured today of God’s everlasting favor and
love.

Mephibosheth “always ate at the king’s table, [though] he was crippled in
both feet,” the narrator concludes (9:13). Mephibosheth never walked as a
man should walk, but he always had a place at the king’s table.

And the tablecloth covered his feet. *

*I am indebted to Dr. Howard Hendricks for this phrase.

Taken from Seeing God, © 2006 by David Roper. Used by permission of Discovery House Publishers, Box 3566, Grand Rapids MI 4950l. All rights reserved.

One Response to “God Discerns the Possibilities”

1. azchaplain says:

   March 5, 2011 at 9:22 am

   Thank you!