Over the years
James Cathcart
July 04, 2021
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Listen to this daily worship
2 Samuel 5: 1-5 (NRSVA)
1 Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron, and said, ‘Look, we are your bone and flesh. 2 For some time, while Saul was king over us, it was you who led out Israel and brought it in. The Lord said to you: It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel.’ 3 So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel. 4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for forty years. 5 At Hebron he reigned over Judah for seven years and six months; and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah for thirty-three years.
Do you get those weird notifications on your phone — BAM — that stop you in your tracks…
PHONE: Do you know exactly where you were 7 years go? Because I do!
YOU: Pardon?
PHONE: You were having a burrito!
YOU: Huh. Okay.
PHONE: With Colin!
YOU: Who?
PHONE: Colin!
YOU: Colin, Colin… eh…
PHONE: You used to work together? Well not directly, there was an agency or a quango… Colin, you know Colin. You saw him once holding a shoe outside Argos? Always posts recipes for banana bread ‘with a twist’?
YOU: Vaguely.
PHONE: Never mind. How about 3 years ago to the day — to the day — you got a new matt-gloss-all-in-one-sealant-protector-solution-system that you said, and I quote, ‘was gonna change my life’.
YOU: Oh yeah, that stuff didn’t really work. We had to get new deckchairs.
PHONE: Life changed!
YOU: I suppose, they ended up repaving the whole garden and having to treat the entire cul-de-sac. It smelled for months.
PHONE: Scratch that. Precisely a decade ago — you saw…a pinecone!
YOU: A pine cone!
PHONE: Look I’m trying here…
YOU: I remember it! Sheila gave it to me.
PHONE: Oh?
YOU: It was the last thing she gave me. Said it reminded her of me, because it was beautiful and packed with potential. I put it up on the mantle piece. She was amazing.
PHONE: Wow.
YOU: Funny to think back.
PHONE: If we go to 10 years plus one day I’ve got a banana bread recipe.
YOU: No, it’s okay.
PHONE: It’s got a twist…
YOU: It’s fine really
PHONE: ‘No banana’ banana bread!
YOU: I’m good with the pinecone, thanks phone.
PHONE: 😊
Imagine through the twists and turns of King David’s later life if he’d got a phone notification: "This day three years ago/thirty years ago/thirty-three years ago you were anointed before your God and your people to serve…”
PRAYER:
Be with us in our cherished and mundane memories
as we piece together what it means to be yours
over the years
Amen.
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