This particular crisis in David's life was that he returned home from a battle, only to discover that raiding Amalekites had attacked and burned down his home city, Ziklag, as well as kidnapping all the women and children who had been there.
David's first response to this crisis is found in verse 4: "David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep." It's perhaps not the response you were expecting, but it's an important one; when tragedy engulfs us or disaster strikes at the foundations of our lives, it's important that we give ourselves permission to grieve and to express our emotions - to shed tears and to talk, both to God and to other people, about our pain.
I remember, twenty years ago now, meeting a teenage girl on a King's Kids outreach in Namibia. Her Mum had died just a few months before, but she hadn't allowed herself to cry, because people told her that Christians are supposed to "be strong." The pressure that people put on this poor girl was based on a wrong understanding of what it means to be strong. Strong people are able to express their emotions freely and without embarrassment, but in a healthy way. It is much healthier to shed tears of grief, loss or disappointment, than to push our feelings under the surface and allow them to fester there.
So David's first response to the crisis was to grieve…. but it didn't stop there. It would have been unhealthy for David to cry forever, to wallow in self pity, worry or depression, or to become paralysed with thoughts of regret and hopelessness. Read on (below) to discover an important second step that brought balance to David's feelings of grief and discouragement.
