Daily Devotional for Saturday, January 20

The Routing

“Where the people of Israel were slain before the servants of David, and there was there a great slaughter that day of twenty thousand men. For the battle was there scattered over the face of all the country: and the wood devoured more people that day than the sword devoured,” 2 Samuel 18:7, 8.

Sometimes God moves in miraculous ways, sometimes in the ordinary. We read of the Red Sea splitting, and we are amazed. We read of miraculous healings, and we are amazed. But we also read of this: “Give us this day our daily bread.” When we pray this prayer, we may not necessarily be praying for the miraculous provision of food such as the feeding of the five thousand. We simply are asking God to provide through normal means: a job, strength to work and food to buy.

David and his armies faced a superior force with larger numbers. By all normal reasoning, David should have been beaten that day. But as we read above, Absalom’s forces were routed, and David’s forces were victorious. Notice the reason: the forest. At first, you might be tempted to think that God somehow used the woods in a miraculous way against the forces that were trying to destroy David, but that is not what happened. David had a smaller, better trained force that had experience fighting guerrilla style warfare. Open ground would favor Absalom’s greater numbers. God so ordained this battle, though, that it took place in an area that would advantage David’s forces and disadvantage Absalom’s forces. The forested area fought on David’s side, not by miraculous means, but by the providential arrangement of circumstances.

God hears our prayers, and He acts on our behalf, but often He does so in surprising, non-miraculous ways: through health and sometimes through sickness; through making things go smoothly and sometimes through delay; and through a million different ways He cares for us, though it may be in eternity before we even realize it.

REFLECTION
Give thanks in all things because God is at work in all things.

Jason Rutherford