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Meribaal
A Story of Scattered Shame
by F. Remy Diederich
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I decided to leave the ministry in 1990. Not forever--I just needed some time to gainperspective. Fellow ministers were burning out and dropping likes flies, and I did not wantto become just another statistic.
Rather than simply take time off, however, my wife and I decided to try something radical. Tiredof the hypocritical, superficial Christianity we had seen in the church, we decided to live incommunity with two other Christian families. Our goal was to "love one another" as we dailylived out the Christian life on an idyllic Wisconsin dairy farm.Before long, however, one of the families moved away, and withthem their manpower and financial support. Never having farmedbefore, I suddenly found myself in constant crisis mode. Equipmentbroke, animals died, exhaustion set in, and I barely had time to spendwith my own family, let alone anyone else. Church was somethingwe did on Sunday--but only if nothing broke or died first. Rather than"loving one another," our partners seemed more like enemies thanfriends. To top it all off, my wife felt I had emotionally abandonedher (which I had) and I became short-tempered with my threechildren. One of the things I learned on the farm was that I wasn’t as smart as Ithought I was. If I had to grade myself in life before going to thefarm, I’d have given myself a B+. I thought that I did most things well, not great, but prettywell. And I felt good about that. But after living on the farm for a few years, my grade hadslipped to a solid D.As I went from person to person or task to task on the farm, there wasn’t too much that I didright. I felt like a complete and utter failure. I had never felt like a failure before. Sure, I hadfailed in specific areas. But this feeling was more pervasive. I realized that I wasn’t giving mywife the emotional support she needed, I saw that I could be harsh with my children, I wasn’tbeing the friend to my farm partners like I wanted to be and then there were all the tasks.I had never lived on a farm before. I was mechanically challenged, to put it nicely. Thingswould break and I’d just stare at them. I had no idea what to do. And worse than that, I had ahabit of killing cows. It wasn’t intentional. But I quickly learned that if you don’t treat yourcows the right way at the right time,
they die.
My poor partner hated to see me coming. Either Iwas coming to tell him something was broken or something died. Needless to say, it put a strainon our relationship.And then, added to all of that, was the question of where I was going. I had always thought that Iwould end up back in ministry, but I was so consumed with the work on the farm that I barelyattended church, let alone had time for ministry.Living your life at the D level is hard. It emotionally drains you. You get up every day fearingwhat’s going to go wrong next. I can remember praying,“
God, this wasn’t the deal. It wasn’t supposed to work like this!This was supposed to be my dream life and it’s turned into a nightmare.”
You see, instead of God taking CARE of me, it seemed like God was working AGAINST me!
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Have you ever been in a place like that?
Have you ever had so many things go wrong in yourlife that you thought that God was actually working against you? Maybe that’s how you feeltoday.There is a story tucked away in the Bible, in First and Second Samuel, that talks about this veryfeeling of God working against you. In fact, the story’s main character has the name Meribaal,which means “
the God who fights against me
”. You don’t get a name like that without having afew issues in your life.Today is the first of a series this summer talking about extreme makeovers from God. So we aregoing to see what God did in Meribaal’s life and I’m hoping it will be a big encouragement toyou.The story begins back in the days when Israel had their first king, King Saul. Saul was anexcellent leader, but he made the mistake of disobeying God. When he did that, God chose anew leader to take his place. His name was David. But Saul wasn’t stupid. Even though heknew that his days were numbered, he wasn’t going to simply roll over and allow David to takethe throne without putting up a fight. Saul became obsessed with hunting down David in hopesof killing him so Saul could remain king.Now, surprisingly, David’s best friend was Saul’s son. His name was Jonathan. In First Samuel,chapter twenty, David asked a favor of Jonathan. He said,“
Jonathan, I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately but your dad’s spears have been getting pretty close to me! How would you like to help keep your dad from killing me
?”Now, Jonathan was a pretty smart guy - he saw this as an opportunity. He knew that if he helpedDavid, David would probably become king. He also knew that the habit of most new kings wasto kill the family of the previous king to prevent any kind of rebellion. So Jonathan said,“
David, I’ll make a deal with you. If you promise not to kill me or my descendants when you become king, I’ll promise to help keep my dad from killing you.”
It sounded good to David, so they made a covenant.Not long after that, Saul and Jonathan were both killed in battle. David was then free to take thethrone. When he did, there was a great rush by Saul’s family to evacuate Jerusalem for fear thatthey would be killed.One of these family members who fled was Jonathan’s only son – Meribaal. He was five-yearsold at the time. Second Samuel, chapter four says that in the rush to leave the city, the boy’snurse dropped him, and as a result, he lost the use of both his feet. (We don’t know whathappened, maybe a horse trampled him.) The nurse grabbed the boy and smuggled him into thedesert to live in exile, twenty miles from Jerusalem. My guess is that his nurse gave him thename “Meribaal” – the God who fights against me - at that time, and it is not hard to understandwhy.First of all, his father and grandfather had just been killed. Second, since no one knew aboutDavid’s covenant with Jonathan, the nurse must have felt like Meribaal was under the constantthreat of being assassinated. Finally, the boy was crippled, and I say that in the worst sense of the word. In that day, there was no concept of being “physically challenged”. To be crippled
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Meribaal- A Story of Scattered Shame
Have you ever felt like God is working against you? There was a time in my life when I was failing at everything my hand touched...the anti-midas effect. This short article tells the story of Meribaal...a…
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