What' Behind It All?

Let me know what you think, but I believe intention outweighs execution by far. What I mean by that is that we do lots of things in our lives and sometimes we do them for good intentions and other times we do them for selfish gain or maybe even just for show. I remember several years ago being invited to someone’s house for an inter-denominational group to plan some upcoming events. It was my first time attending this group and I have to be honest, I felt as if I were attending some kind of insiders club that I was not a part of. Not just that but I also felt like I was also invited so that the person hosting could take me on a tour of their house where they specifically pointed out all the prizes they had acquired from their travels around the world. He even began our time together telling the entire group about his latest travels. Now obviously this was just my experience of what was happening, but as we got to the meeting I heard lots of conversations not just of what they had done in the past as a way to talk of what could be done next, but just immense praise for themselves and how they had done so much by forming this group.

While I don’t doubt that this group had done good things and that the event I did host was a nice event, again, it seemed more for self glorification than it did for doing actual good and promoting actual inter-denominational cooperation. For a number of reasons, after I hosted the event, I declined to continue to be a part of the group. The intention behind why we do things is more important than us just doing things for the sake of doing them.

It is that idea of intention and execution that permeates our story today as well as parts of the story that we don’t get that we need to fill in to get the full picture. You see, when David was at his best, he was fully focused on God and following through with God’s plan. We see that very clearly in the first part of our reading today when the Northern tribes that had been following King Saul say to David that even they recognized that the LORD was with David and that he would be the one who would shepherd God’s people Israel. David then ends up ruling over a united Israel for 33 years. David’s intention was on God and even people who were not for David couldn’t help but recognize the close relationship between David and God.

Now is where we have to look at the part of the text of David bringing the ark up to Jerusalem, but also fill in some gaps, or more accurately, continue on with the story so we know what is really going on. We’re doing that because if we just look at our reading today it would seem as if David and the ark make it to Jerusalem with this procession. The reality is that it doesn’t. At least not right away. Someone died during this first procession because they touched the ark, so they stopped and left it at someone’s home and it wasn’t for another three months until they made the second and final procession bringing the ark to Jerusalem.

I have said it before and I’ll keep saying it that intention is more important than execution, not the other way around. What I see happening in this story is that while part of David’s intention is good, to bring the ark to Jerusalem, it seems his other intention and execution the first time around, is more focused on a military parade than bringing the representation of the presence of God to the new capital of Israel. David hand-picked 30,000 soldiers to process the ark. The ark itself was placed on a cart and probably handled and watched by two men who were not priests. While they are celebrating the LORD’s presence they are doing it the way any other king in the world would do it, by show of military force.

I obviously can’t say with absolute certainty but I believe this is one of the reasons why this procession to bring the ark to Jerusalem failed. David was acting like any other king and not like the king of Israel and the servant of the LORD.

If we look at the second time that David processes the ark to Jerusalem, there is a very different focus than the first. There is no mention of 30,000 soldiers being a part of the procession. It talks about those bearing the ark, which almost certainly means that they were the priests who were responsible for transporting the ark. Every six steps they made sacrifices to God and David was wearing priestly clothing.

The intention had completely changed from a military focus to a worship focus. David wasn’t dressed or thinking like any other king, we was dressed and focused on being a servant of the LORD. And because the intention changed the execution changed. When David was at his best he was focused on God and being the best servant of God he could be.

What do you think things would look like, or how things might change or be shifted if we, like David, made our focus and intention entirely on God. If we stopped focusing on what the world was focused on or what other people are doing and firmly planted our feet and our heart on what the LORD of hosts is doing within us and how we can use that to process out of this place and share the very presence of God with them?

And I know it wasn’t in the actual reading, but scripture tells us that as the ark was making it’s way to and in the city of Jerusalem David danced with all his strength before the LORD. What that tells me is that his shift in focus, even affected his emotional and physical expression. We even see that his wife hates it that he danced like a fool, to which David declares that when celebrating before God, he would dance like a fool again and not only that, but he would become even more foolish so that he can remind himself of the humility he needs when being in the presence of God.

Not only did David see the need to shift his focus and intention back on God, but when he did his entire being was changed. So I invite each of us to explore the ways that God is working in each and every one of us. To explore what that looks like and to see how that shift can affect our very being to the point that we are so overjoyed with what God is doing in our lives and in the lives of others that we can’t help but dance for joy. For God is always doing a new thing in and through us each and every day. Amen.