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Talking about poems from my youth - I remember Rudyard Kipling´s IF painted on each side of the stage in the assembly hall of the Naval Training School.

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master,
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

—Rudyard Kipling

May 2, 2008

No Good Deed

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READ: 1 Samuel 25:32-39

Blessed be the Lord, who has pleaded the cause of my reproach. —1 Samuel 25:39

Playwright and US Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987) once said, “No good deed goes unpunished.” Sadly, it sometimes seems as if this aphorism is true.

David, soon to be king of Israel, had an experience that corroborates this idea. While hiding from Saul, he and his men watched over the property of a rich landowner named Nabal. But later, when David asked a favor of Nabal, he was met with scorn. “Surely in vain I have protected all that this fellow has,” said David. “He has repaid me evil for good” (1 Sam. 25:21).

Before David could carry out revenge, Nabal’s wife intervened and kept David from acting rashly. Soon, God struck Nabal dead (v.38). Then David praised God for keeping him from evil and for returning “the wickedness of Nabal on his own head” (v.39).

Perhaps you’ve had an experience when kindness was repaid with ingratitude, a generous gift was treated as an entitlement, kind actions were interpreted as an attempt to control, or well-intended advice was received with scorn.

David’s story reminds us that even when it seems as if we’re being repaid with evil for doing good, we don’t have to take matters into our own hands; we can trust God with the outcome.

This is my Father’s world—
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet. —Babcock
© 1966 Singspiration, Inc

One day God will right every wrong.

Bible in One Year: 1 Samuel 25–27; Proverbs 11:22-31