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Have you ever had a close call with death? Tree stands, highways, working with electricity and climbing ladders are just a few of the places that life can be a little precarious. According to our text for Sunday, Saul had a close call with death in the bathroom. He and David were in the same restroom, but Saul didn’t know it. The only thing that saved Saul’s life was the sensitive conscience of David.

On Sunday, we’ll look at the account of Jesus’ appearance to His disciples on the Sunday He was raised from the dead (John 20:19-23). It must have made quite an impression! On that day He sent them into the world to proclaim the message of forgiveness. God’s heart longed to forgive. Christ’s work paid the debt. But people must hear and receive it. For those who have received Him and His grace, there are four Old Testament passages that describe the extent of our forgiveness. I first learned these from Jerry Bridges’ book Transforming Grace. Psalm 103:12 “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

Many years ago B.C. (before children), Tina and I were attending a church that we had been at for a couple of years and found ourselves at a place where we were rather discouraged with our “church experience”. It happened to also be the church that my parents were also attending, so our typical Sunday looked like Tina and I getting up and driving from our second story apartment in East Town (Grand Rapids) and driving to our church in Rockford. We would walk in, find the pew my parents were sitting in (yes we still used pew’s back in the olden days) sat with them, did a little singing, listened to a sermon that occasionally held my interest, stood during the final prayer, and then walked out to my Escort Pony and drove to my parents house for lunch before we would head back to our apartment.

A wilderness experience can be exhilarating and memorable—if you chose to do it, had a plan and knew that it was coming to an end! However, some wilderness experiences are not by choice, they are caused by others, there is no plan and there is no end in sight. How do we navigate wilderness experiences? David’s life has some lessons for us. After his big moment of victory over Goliath and all the popularity that went with it, David’s life became a wilderness experience.

Floods. Wars. Storms. Suffering. Death. Pain. Loneliness. What ever happened to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? We read about the mayhem. We see images on television and social media. We experience the struggle of death, grief and loss ourselves. It’s almost like we are living in a world that is not right! We don’t have to live in Gaza or Ukraine to experience the tension of war because the whole earth is a warzone. The bombs and bullets and destruction take different forms but we’re all experiencing the conflict one way or another.