    In the 10 July Bible Study for the Day, we considered how God’s plans to work everything for the good of the faithful are often inscrutable to us. The reading for today shows us just how difficult those plans can sometimes seem to be.
    To David and Abiathar at that moment, nothing about what was happening could have seemed like it was remotely leading to any good. David was living as a rogue, his family in exile in the court of one of Israel’s enemies, and Abiathar’s entire family and city had just been slaughtered.
    Certainly, these two men were suffering the consequences of actions that were hardly their own. The root of Saul’s madness was really the fact that Israel had demanded a king, rejecting God’s rulership through His priests and judges. Now Israel had a schizophrenic and violent king and its priests had all just been slaughtered.
    Yet, neither Israel nor David nor Abiathar could have imagined at that moment that all of these terrible events were coming together for the good of not only David and Abiathar and Israel, but for all the faithful for all times, because it was these events that would eventually establish David as king and establish the house from which the Savior of all mankind would be born.
    Through the lens of these events, we can see the truth of Paul’s message in Romans 5:3-4 that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope, and this hope is our faith which leads us to our ultimate good, which is our goal of Heaven.
DLH
