Daily Devotional for Monday, February 19

The Conspiracy of Adonijah

“Then Adonijah the son of Haggith exalted himself, saying, I will be king: and he prepared him chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him,” 1 Kings 1:5.

I have been in public school education for twenty-three years now. When I was still in the classroom, I would have a recurring dream every few months in which I would lose total control of my classroom. It would start small, where I would correct a misbehaving child, but it did not work. So I would take it to the next level of correction, but it still did not work. The escalation would continue until I was screaming and yelling and just knew I would be fired. Then I would wake up, anxious and in a sweat.

Maybe you have had a similar dream, or worse yet, you have had a portion of your life like this. No matter how hard you try, nothing goes right, and all you try to do turns for the worse. Well, this is a little how the kingdom of Israel was in our passage. Everything was falling apart. David was old, and his health was failing. It also appeared that he had not been taking care of his succession plans. His son Adonijah had been plotting to take over the throne. Through tactical maneuvers, Adonijah was setting himself up to be the next king, even though God had already declared that Solomon would be king. Even officers within David’s ruling court were aligning themselves in different directions. On the surface, it seems as though it was all falling apart.

Yet, we know the rest of the story. We know that God was still in control. We know that the plans of God would not be thwarted. No false king can derail the plans of God.

REFLECTION
You may not know the details of how your story will turn out, but you know enough to trust God. Even when it feels like the wheels are coming off, God is there to put them back on.

Jason Rutherford