God's Faithfulness

The stories of the kings of Israel and Judah, as recorded in Kings and Chronicles, get...a little messy, as God's history with His people sometimes is. He has made promises to David, as He made promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and those promises reach down to David's son, Solomon. But...kind of.

Because in his dying breaths, when David is telling Solomon about God's promise, there are two points of information that are extremely important. 

First, David tells Solomon that God will keep His promise to David throughout Solomon's life. That is, God's faithfulness, and His promise, extend into the next generation because of the faithfulness of David during his lifetime. 

But the other half of that sentence is that Solomon, in turn, must be faithful to the Lord the way that David was in order for God's promise to David to continue being fulfilled. 

So God is faithful to Solomon because of the life of David, and God is faithful to David on account of the life of Solomon. 

And, well, doesn't it seem to us that God ought to be faithful to us on account of...our own lives? 

I have heard it said fairly often by persons in management that one of the most frustrating things about being a supervisor is that all of a sudden, your performance review is not based only on the work that you do, but on the work that those you are supervising do. In other words, you're not responsible for your own failure or success any more; other humans contribute into that.

At the same time, though, those other persons, the ones on your team, are no longer responsible only for themselves, either. Their work directly impacts your performance as a supervisor. So it creates a sort of interdependence between leadership and team members. 

And I think that's what God is going for in this little vignette that David gives us. Your faithfulness is good, and God is faithful to you on account of that. But He is also faithful to others on account of your faithfulness...and faithful to you on account of theirs. 

We are not individuals, no matter what our culture tells us. We are interdependent. We are interconnected. Our lives are nestled into one another in a way that absolutely matters, whether we believe that and try to live it or not. 

So whose life is a blessing to you today? And whose life are you blessing? 

Or better put, whose life is God using yours to bless today? And whose life is God blessing you through today?