Layers.

Childhood emotions come in single syllables: mad, sad, glad.  You laugh, cry, pout, fume.  Adulthood is complicated.  You feel pensive, ambivalent, bittersweet.  Adult emotions have more layers than a wedding cake. 

David understood.  This poet who killed giants, this warrior who was a music therapist, this military tactician who cuddled lambs—David understood complex emotions.  For years, he sang to help King Saul’s emotions.  Then he spent years running from the king.  And though he could have killed Saul, David refused, and when others did, David grieved the loss of his mentor-turned-enemy. 

David’s life was like that, one weighty drama after another.  If his life was a television show, I would scoff, call it a soap opera, and shut it off.

But what I am impressed with is David’s ability to INHABIT his emotions.  Like any good writer or musician, the psalmist can sit there and live in that place, fully feeling his emotions and then using his creative skills to express them in words and music.  (By the way, how amazing is it that Israel’s greatest warrior and king is also one of its most creative and prolific writers?)

When Absalom leads a revolt, moves into the palace, sleeps with the concubines—most kings would write the son off and hate him forever.  Not David.  David fights back, regains the throne, but commands his men to show Absalom mercy.  When Joab kills the usurper, David is broken.

“Absalom! My son, my son!  Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! Absalom, my son, my son!” 2 Samuel 18:23.

At a time when David’s soldiers should be cheering, the king’s grief ruins the celebrations.  But—FEELINGS.  It’s COMPLICATED, right?  Where many men would try to ignore the loss and be happy to pick up the crown and scepter, David remains a father who loves his children.  He is not afraid to INHABIT his emotions.  This man’s-man feels everything. 

And why does that matter?

Because David was “a man after God’s own heart” 1 Samuel 13:14.

God, teach us to FEEL emotions, not fear them.

ΑΩ