Scraping My Baby Fat Knees

Tonight we were assigned to read I Samuel 14 and its account of Jonathan and his armor bearer storming a Philistine stronghold. With a real story—maybe even one David passed down to his son— the account illustrated one of the verses in Proverbs that I transcribed upon a Lake Tahoe hotel note sheet and upon which I’ve meditated since that business trip 3 months ago.
Proverbs 21:22 says that “a wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the stronghold in which they trust.”
I run an ad agency with a lot of deadlines, demands, and task lists. I’m a check lister, always reminding myself with what I have to do. And I get things done. But I usually push the most mentally and socially difficult projects until I can’t anymore.
I’ll scale the watch tower all day—the easy steps. I’m not a Jonathan or even his support man. And that holds true in my spiritual life, too.
I’m good at pointing out to myself what I need to do and checking the easy things (like encouragement notes or Powerpoint® slides) off my spiritual to-do list. “Yep, got my chapter in Proverbs read today, my little prayer . . . even listened to praise and worship music while I worked.”
I’m good at pointing out the spiritual to-do lists for my wife, my friends, and my extended family. Tonight I thought about my sister-in-law and little brother, both at the breaking off point with their dating partners and each needing but struggling to let go of their unhealthy “loves” and move on to the better choices and chances ahead.
Yet, as I walked through the late rain tonight, I was convicted of the mote in my eye, my struggle with sensuality and arrogance and materialism.
So I need not only to conquer the strongholds—the big challenges—but also to vanquish the small hurdles. Probably the latter first. Maybe right now those besetting sins are the strongholds or just foreshortened against the horizon of grander pending battles.
I took solace in the fact that in this passage even courageous Jonathan accomplished all of this crawling on his hands and knees. He didn’t go Rambo-blazing into some Pakistani cave. He scrambled from one small outcropping to the next. He probably scraped his knees and elbows and maybe even his chin. It wasn’t easy for him.
But the cumulative effort initiated far more of a victory than all of his dad’s troops waiting to do the hard thing. He made their hard thing easier.
And maybe, once I start knocking out these random enemies, it will make it easier for my loved ones to start conquering their Philistines.