Tuesday, February 3, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Four movements
Is young Absalom safe?
David’s messenger didn’t think of David’s love for his son. The Cushite knew what had happened to the rebellious kid and was pretty happy about it:
His hair caught fast in a terebinth tree.
He hung between heaven and earth
while the mule he had been riding ran off.
Taking three pikes in hand,
Your loyal general Joab thrust for the heart of Absalom,
still hanging from the tree alive.
May the enemies of my lord the king
be as that young man!
King David was shaken, and he wept.
“Would God that I had died for thee,” David cried. ‘This child is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, was and always shall be, world without end.”
Memories flashed before David, horrifying scenes over and over when he failed his son. Does it matter, anymore, what I have accomplished in my life, how I have followed you all the days in all the ways you have made in me?  My child is dead, and none of what happened between us before this moment, matters.
I am burst into a thousand pieces, an old pane of glass, used up.
Would God that I had died for thee.
But not only David, Jairus … and not only Jairus, but a woman, hemorrhaging for twelve years waiting in the crowd for Jesus. Wasn’t her mother overwhelmed with sadness and resignation, unable to stop loving her daughter? When Jairus’ daughter is sick and cannot get well, when Jesus is on his way to her bedside and then she dies while he’s on the way, oh my Lord, my Lord Jesus! We are all undone.
Would God that I could have died for my daughter!
Perhaps if you had come just a few moments sooner … twelve years maybe?
Incline your ear to your servant, O Lord,
and answer me,
for I am afflicted and poor.
Jesus is a busy man. But when the bleeding woman touches him, well … he is arrested.
She remembered the days of her youth, when her parents doted on her and her family worshiped the Lord, and then when suddenly all were ravaged by her unclean bleeding. Now Jesus was coming and with absolutely no official permission she waited in the crowd, terrified she would be found out when her blood fell on the street. But now He’s coming! She ran into the street and touched him, and in that instant …. her bleeding stopped.
Jesus was aware at once that power had gone out of him.
“Who touched me?”
The woman fell down before him, and Jesus smiled.
“Daughter your faith has saved you.
Go in peace. You are cured.”
Breathless she raced home, laughing, crying … laughing!
I know the story, but still I’m holding my breath. Hurry, Jesus! Time does not stand still! And suddenly servants come and tell Jesus not to trouble himself any longer. Jairus’ daughter has died.
Jesus steels his gaze and continues down the street to his friend’s house. Arriving at the front door, seeing Jairus’ despair, perhaps he thought of David and Absalom and David’s unquenchable love for his angry son.
Jesus knew he would raise up Jairus’ daughter. Perhaps he would have raised up Absalom as well. David had been a little boy, grown up strong like Absalom. Jairus had been a little boy and grown up to become his daughter’s father.
Let the little children come unto me, Jesus said.
And who among us was not then, or is not still, a little child?
Disregarding the message that was reported,
 Jesus said to the synagogue official,
“Do not be afraid; just have faith.
The child is not dead, but asleep.”
Could this be? Again alert, eyes wide, Jairus couldn’t breath. Jesus was so certain. Jairus and his wife looked at each other, grabbed each other’s hand, and ran to follow Jesus into their daughter’s room.
Jesus took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,”
which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”
The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around.
And Jesus told her parents to give their daughter something to eat.
Joab killed, David wept, Jesus resurrected, two families rejoiced.
Now, as then, in all our days of life and death, the sun rises and the sun sets, and our Father walks before us, turning sometimes and smiling:
Do not be afraid. Just have faith. Follow me.
So thus we live our lives.
(2 Samuel 18, Psalm 86, Matthew 8, Mark 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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