Ever felt like you were missing something?

You’re a day late, a dollar short, left your notes at home for an important meeting, didn’t pack underwear for a trip, left your cell phone at the office, forgot that today was your wedding anniversary. We do it all the time. It irks us; it can embarrass us; it can be detrimental to us.

What is even more maddening is to have something and not be able to find it. You just know that it is in the dresser drawer or the blue box in the attic or the plastic storage bin in the garage. You wildly tear through where it is supposed to be because, after all those months or years of not needing it, now you desperately need it. You go back to where you’ve already looked and look again, just knowing that it just has to be there.

Sometimes what we’re looking for is really important. Some of the folks going to Brazil with us on this trip in July have valid passports. They haven’t used them in a few years and “stored” them in a “safe” place. Yep! You guessed it! They turned their homes upside down frantically looking for that little blue book. Fortunately, everyone found them; but one had already started the paperwork to get a new one — that was how sure she was that she couldn’t find what she had put away for safe keeping so she could easily put her hands on it later.

David asked Ahimelech, “Do you have a spear or sword of any kind around here? I didn’t have a chance to grab my weapons. The king’s mission was urgent and I left in a hurry.”  The priest said, “The sword of Goliath, the Philistine you killed at Oak Valley—that’s here! It’s behind the Ephod wrapped in a cloth. If you want it, take it. There’s nothing else here.”  “Oh,” said David, “there’s no sword like that! Give it to me!”
–1 Samuel 21:8-10

The boy king-to-be David is running for his life from King Saul. He cut out of Dodge so fast that he doesn’t even have a weapon to defend himself. He drops in at a local church for a bite to eat and asks the pastor if he happens to have a weapon lying around. [SIDENOTE: most pastors I know usually don’t keep a loaded .38 in their desk drawer]. Amazingly, this pastor just happened to have Goliath’s sword in the closet.

You remember Goliath. The 9-foot tall dude who wanted to feed David’s intestines to the birds? Goliath had a really bad day when he met David. In fact, you might say he lost his head. A bit of a frontal lobe headache produced by a small river pebble turned into a terminal “disease.” David takes his massive sword as a souvenir and we don’t hear anything else about it.

Until now.

The “forgotten sword” becomes the catalyst that propels David into eventual kingship of Israel. What he’d forgotten became essential to his success.

I continually have those moments. God has a way of helping me “remember” what I’ve forgotten. Sometimes he does it without me looking for “it;” most times I’ve gone looking for “it” without knowing where “it” is and he helps me find “it” in unlikely places. There are even times when I don’t know what “it” is, and he shows it to me.

I’m wanting him to show me my “Goliath’s sword.” I’m hoping I have the strength to pick it up…