Mighty Warrior (adapted from Judg. 6-7 and 2 Sam. 23)
Shammah finds himself in the middle of a lentil field. A bead of sweat drips down off his brown beard, splattering on a green leaf before striking the dirt below. His battle scarred hand is wrapped in a grip of steel around the hilt of his brandished sword. His left arm pulses under the straps of the shield of his beloved King David, whom he has followed faithfully since a young man. His strong legs stand rooted in the fertile ground shoulder width apart, his knees and below being covered by the green lentil plants.
It is an all too familiar feeling for Shammah – it is not the first time his fellow Israelite soldiers have fled in fear and left him standing alone to fight – the solitary figure in the middle of the field. Something in him won’t let him run though; he’s a fighter, a warrior among warriors. But he wasn’t always. There’s something different in him; a crazy reckless confidence maybe. He’s been called crazy, stupid, rash, and even a mad man by many a fellow soldier. By all rights he should have been a dead man on numerous accounts. But every time, something happens. He prays it will happen again on this evening.
His enemies, the enemies of his fathers before him, begin their advance on him out of the surrounding grove of balsams. One by one they appear from the wood line in a semicircle enclosing steadily in around him. Their curses, taunts and snickers reach his ears but he pays them no mind. This is one man they won’t have their way with. The menacing circle encloses, he figures about 300 of them, the most he has ever faced on his own, at least he likes his enemies to think he is alone.
He didn’t always carry this confidence. He didn’t always know who he was. He finds his mind wandering back to the times early on in his service of King David. Though hardly a king back then by anyone’s generous estimation, Shammah always knew David was a great man and would one day be a great king. He admired his integrity, humility, and fear of the God of Jacob. He always did his best to support him and come underneath him to build his reign up. He remembers the countless days of fleeing in the hill country, the empty stomachs, the restless cold, watchful nights, the caves, the hiding…being on the run. Back then, in the beginning, he didn’t feel like a mighty warrior, and certainly he never thought someday he would be honored among his beloved David’s three mightiest warriors.
He remembers the rainy night when David recounted to him the story of their ancestor Gideon, when God first called him up from hiding. David and Shammah were sitting around a small fire they had chanced to kindle under a rocky outcropping despite the possibility of being spotted by enemy scouts. David told him of how the God of Jacob had appeared to Gideon when he himself was hiding – threshing wheat in a winepress of all things, and his tribe cowering in caverns and caves across the countryside. David told Shammah of how God declared Gideon to be something he was not at the moment or by his own power could ever be – a Mighty Warrior. He remembered how David had said God had called out in Gideon what He saw in him but what Gideon did not see in himself in the least. Shammah remembered fighting back the tears in his eyes for at the time he was scared, ashamed, and feeling totally unable to do anything of significance for his beloved master David. He remembered.
His enemies were running at him now, he heard their yells and curses as they moved toward him to utterly swallow him hole, sliced into a hundred pieces at the edge of their ungodly merciless blades and spears. He felt a tinge of fear and then, then in his head he heard something he had heard for the first time years ago around that little campfire. David had looked him intently in the eyes through the flickers of the fire and said prophetically; “The Lord is with you Mighty Warrior”. He remembered the firm clap on his weary shoulder and the slightest wink from his master before he got up and walked off into the night, leaving Shammah to his thoughts. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what David had said to him and when he stood up a few minutes later, he felt there was something different about him. In the days and weeks later he found he couldn’t get those few words out of his mind.
Suddenly a power surged through his pulsing veins such as he had never felt before and he knew in that moment that the God of Jacob whom his King David served, indeed whom he now served wholeheartedly, had given his enemies into his hands. He lifted his sword, charging forward to meet them.
