One Year Bible: May 15

“You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies—the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. Today the Lord will conquer you … and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel!”

1 Samuel 17:5,6

To read today’s portion of scripture, you can purchase The One Year Bible or find the following in your Bible:

1 Samuel 17:1-18:4
John 8:21-30
Psalm 111:1-10
Proverbs 15:11

On our second trip to Israel, our guide told us one morning that we’d be going to the Valley of Elah, which was the scene of David’s victory over Goliath. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t what I saw. The field between those hills was so … ordinary. It was just a large, flat area of ground. It looked like every other field I had seen in my life.

I picked up a few small rocks and held them in my hand. They could have been pulled from my garden back home. The clouds overhead looked like my clouds; the breeze was no different than all the other breezes I’d felt.

I wanted the battlefield to be bigger than life, because that’s how the story looms in my life. But mercifully, it was a quiet, ordinary scene. And I guess that’s the beauty of this story. Had my eyes beheld a bigger-than-life scene, I might think the victory won there was also out of my grasp. Not so.

David’s statement in verse 46 says it all. Your giants will differ from mine; your weapons, like mine, might shrink before them. But when the battle is God’s, and you belong to Him, even a tiny weapon is plenty big enough. We don’t need someone else’s armor. We have all the protection we need.

Goliath’s first weapon against Israel was fear, which he fed them through his daily tauntings. It’s the same tactic our enemy uses with us. So when the fear flung your way begins to stick, lift your eyes to the God of Israel. Stand in confidence with your little pebbles and remember that it’s enough.