{"id":4581,"date":"2023-02-20T22:34:26","date_gmt":"2023-02-21T04:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4581"},"modified":"2023-02-20T22:34:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T04:34:26","slug":"devotional-on-1-samuel-40","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-1-samuel-40\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on 1 Samuel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-58uxyHDqqZE\/XfFmHS6JMVI\/AAAAAAABDAk\/1OiPl4NOO3UArnT9IbJleGmAmGLnavdwACKgBGAsYHg\/s1600\/100_4373.JPG\" width=\"1600\" height=\"901\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2015 &#8211; Sand Point Lighthouse &#8211; Escanaba, MI<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nStrategic insanity<br \/>\n1 Samuel 21: He pretended to go crazy.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s been confirmed that Saul intends to kill David, so David&#8217;s desperately on the run. He has no provisions and doesn&#8217;t have so much as a sword for self-defense. He temporarily remedies that by stopping at the place of worship at Nob where he\u2019s given bread and the sword of Goliath that\u2019s been stored there. Now what? He decides to seek refuge at Gath. His intention is to go there incognito, but he\u2019s immediately recognized. King Achish will almost certainly turn him over to Saul. So, what can he do? We\u2019re told that he pretends to go crazy. Apparently, he put on a pretty good act; good enough that Achish wants nothing to do with him and sends him on his way. Now David is a skilled fighter and he has an excellent weapon, so maybe he could have fought his way out. Or, he might have been able to play &#8220;let&#8217;s make a deal&#8221; with old king Achish. In fact, he\u2019ll do just that with the king of Moab. In this case, though, he fakes insanity. I wonder why he did that. Maybe, as he has entered Gath he\u2019s seen a number of poor, demented people, so insanity is on his mind (pun intended). King Achish alludes to that when he says, &#8220;Don&#8217;t you think I have enough crazy people to put up with as it is without adding another?&#8221; Anyway, I\u2019m thinking about the value of &#8220;strategic insanity&#8221; here. Sometimes it\u2019s better to simply not notice an offense than it is to force a confrontation. It can be better to be blissfully ignorant of what people are saying or thinking and using &#8220;strategic insanity&#8221; to just go on loving them as though they&#8217;ve never said or done anything negative about us. I know that this isn\u2019t always true, but on this day David saved himself a fight and walked away because the king thought he was so crazy that he wouldn&#8217;t be of any use to him. There are probably situations in my life in which &#8220;strategic insanity&#8221; is the best response too.<br \/>\nTake Away: Sometimes ignorance is, indeed, bliss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Strategic insanity 1 Samuel 21: He pretended to go crazy. It\u2019s been confirmed that Saul intends to kill David, so David&#8217;s desperately on the run. He has no provisions and doesn&#8217;t have so much as a sword for self-defense. He temporarily remedies that by stopping at the place of worship at Nob where he\u2019s given [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1473,7],"tags":[114,208,508,651,812],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4581"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14275,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581\/revisions\/14275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}