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David As King - 2 Sam. 19:15-23
David As King - 2 Sam. 19:15-23
Steve Wolfgang shared this quote: “But although the cliché says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said, but what is equally true, is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary: to hide traits that might make others reluctant to give him power, to hide also what he wants to do with that power; if men recognized the traits or realized the aims, they might refuse to give him what he wants. But as a man obtains more power, camouflage is less necessary. The curtain begins to rise. The revealing begins.” --From the Introduction to Robert Caro, The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson (vol. 4: 1958-1964), 2012. Excellent read which took more years to research and write than the years it covers.
Matthew W. Bassford added: “I think too that power reveals when the powerful are put under stress. One of the great subtexts of the history of the Civil War is which generals cracked under the strain and which didn't.
Third, power reveals because it enables you to do what you always wanted to do all along. This is why lots of lottery winners go bonkers with their new-gotten wealth and ruin their lives.”
In our reading of the life of David, it is interesting to see how he used his ‘power’ as king. My quick summation is that he used it to the glory and honor of God. Such is seen in his response to Shimei. David had the ‘power’ to simply have him put to death, but refused to take personal vengeance upon him for such evil speaking and action to ‘the king’. What does your ‘power’ reveal about you?
Hugh DeLong
