Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel…But David stayed at Jerusalem. (2 Samuel 11:1).
Good golf courses, like life, present an individual with choices.
This first hole on the Cypress Creek Course at Champions Golf Club in Houston is a long, dog-leg left, par 4. The left side of the fairway is lined with trees, but if you hit a hard draw down the left side, you can catch the slope of the fairway and end up with a shorter shot into the green.
If you overdraw your drive a little, though, you will end up in the trees where there is rarely a clear shot to the green. Almost always, you are looking for an opening back to the fairway, followed by a mid to short iron third shot into the green. That usually means a bogey or worse.
The right side of the fairway is flat, guarded by two bunkers in the landing area, and leaves the player with a longer shot into the green. But the bunkers are fairly shallow, and if you end up in one of them, you usually have a clear shot to the green.
I know the right choice is to play to the right side of the fairway, but my natural shot is a draw. Hitting the draw down the left side is more comfortable for me, as is the thought of hitting a shorter iron into the green. The harder shot is the one to the right side of the fairway, but it is the right choice.
“Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel…But David stayed at Jerusalem.”
You probably have heard the rest of the story. David engages in the 1000 B.C. version of pornography (roof-gazing), gets to know Bathsheba in the Biblical sense, and then has her husband killed.
After that, David’s son, Absalom, rebels against him. This chain of events represents the worst of David’s life, and on top of that, it was all written down in the Bible so people for the past 3,000 years could read about it.
David’s situation is not something one would hope for, but it all started because, at the time when kings go out to battle, David made a choice: he did what was comfortable instead of what was right.
David was a king. His calling was on the battlefield, leading his men. When David did what was comfortable, he stepped out of his calling and into temptation.
The hard thing and the right thing are often the same. For a golfer, making the right decisions around a golf course is called good course management. For a Christian, making the right decisions in life is called obedience. Both keep us out of the woods.
Prayer: Lord, help me always to clearly see the right decision, even when it is a hard decision, so that I can be obedient to You. Amen.