David's Cave

Reading the book If You Want to Walk on Water You've Got to Get Out of the Boat today Ortberg spoke about failing. This portion started with using David, from the bible, as an example. "He was anointed by Samuel to be king Israel. As a boy he defeated Israel's most formidable enemy - Goliath. King Saul chose him as a warrior and musician. The army loved him, the people wrote songs about him... David knew what it was to walk on water. he trusted God, and for along time everything he touched turned to gold. He was on his way to the palace." Then everything went bad. Saul became jealous of David and wanted him dead. Now David is out of the palace, with the king after him. He ends up losing his wife Michal, Saul's daughter. David fled to Samuel but Saul soon found out where he was so David fled from there. David then went to Jonathon, Saul's son, but Jonathon would not go against his father. David then went to Gath, the hometown of Goliath. "David was very much afraid of King Achish of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them; he pretended to be a mad when in their presence. He scratched marks on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle run down his beard." David did this to get away from there and King Achish ended up just tossing him out. David found himself in a cave, the cave of Adullam (1Samuel22). Ortberg calls this "The Cave Named Failure". David was not through the rut yet because the tribe he would begin to lead, when there wives and children were taken away, they found this out after returning from some time away, they wanted to kill and stone David.

In the discussion all of the pain and discouragement David must have been feeling Ortberg talks about something wonderful that happens in this cave. He says David "gets quiet enough before the Lord to get to the bottom of his pain and discouragement." He uses Psalm 142 as an example of Davids crying out to the Lord. The title of the psalm is "A maskil of David. When he was in the cave. A prayer". Orteberg goes on to mention how "many people never have the courage to do this. Instead, they seek to bury their discouragement deep down inside. They put on a stoic exterior. They force a few smiles, but in doing so they avoid experiencing the pain inside." He goes on to say his biggest regret, in the times he failed or felt like a failure, was not that he failed, but it was that he felt the pain so keenly that he backed away from owning it and learning from it, "so I could not heal and move on." "I wanted to bury it so deeply that no one would ever guess it was there - not even me."