Max Lucado by Facing Your Giants Page B

(25:10–11)
    Nabal pretends he’s never heard of David, lumping him in with runaway slaves and vagabonds. Such insolence infuriates the messengers, and they turn on their heels and hurry back to David with a full report.
    David doesn’t need to hear the news twice. He tells the men to form a posse. Or, more precisely, “Strap on your swords!” (25:12 MSG)
    Four hundred men mount up and take off. Eyes glare. Nostrils flare. Lips snarl. Testosterone flows. David and his troops thunder
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    Olive branches do more good than battle-axes ever will.
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    down on Nabal, the scoundrel, who obliviously drinks beer and eats barbecue with his buddies. The road rumbles as David grumbles, “May God do his worst to me if Nabal and every cur in his misbegotten brood isn’t dead meat by morning!” (25:22 MSG).
    Hang on. It’s the Wild West in the Ancient East.
    Then, all of a sudden, beauty appears. A daisy lifts her head in the desert; a swan lands at the meat packing plant; a whiff of per-fume floats through the men’s locker room. Abigail, the wife of Nabal, stands on the trail. Whereas he is brutish and mean, she is “intelligent and good-looking” (25:3 MSG).
    Brains and beauty. Abigail puts both to work. When she learns of Nabal’s crude response, she springs into action. With no word to her husband, she gathers gifts and races to intercept David. As David and his men descend a ravine, she takes her position, armed with “two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep dressed out and ready for cooking, a bushel of roasted grain, a hundred raisin cakes, and two hundred fig cakes, . . . all loaded on some don-keys” (25:18 MSG).
    Four hundred men rein in their rides. Some gape at the food; others gawk at the female. She’s good lookin’ with good cookin’, a combination that stops any army. (Picture a neck-snapping blonde showing up at boot camp with a truck full of burgers and ice cream.)
    Abigail’s no fool. She knows the importance of the moment. She stands as the final barrier between her family and sure death. Falling at David’s feet, she issues a plea worthy of a paragraph in Scripture. “On me, my lord, on me let this iniquity be! And please let your maidservant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your maid-servant” (25:24).
    She doesn’t defend Nabal but agrees that he is a scoundrel. She begs not for justice but forgiveness, accepting blame when she deserves none. “Please forgive the trespass of your maidservant” (25:28). She offers the gifts from her house and urges David to leave Nabal to God and avoid the dead weight of remorse.
    Her words fall on David like July sun on ice. He melts.
    Blessed be God, the God of Israel. He sent you to meet me! . . . A close call! . . . if you had not come as quickly as you did, stopping me in my tracks, by morning there would have been nothing left of Nabal but dead meat. . . . I’ve heard what you’ve said and I’ll do what you’ve asked. (25:32–35 MSG)
    David returns to camp. Abigail returns to Nabal. She finds him too drunk for conversation so waits until the next morning to describe how close David came to camp and Nabal came to death. “Right then and there he had a heart attack and fell into a coma. About ten days later God finished him off and he died” (25:37–38 MSG).
    When David learns of Nabal’s death and Abigail’s sudden availability, he thanks God for the first and takes advantage of the second. Unable to shake the memory of the pretty woman in the middle of the road, he proposes, and she accepts. David gets a new wife, Abigail a new home, and we have a great principle: beauty can over-come barbarism.
    Meekness saved the day that day. Abigail’s gentleness reversed a river of anger. Humility has such power. Apologies can disarm arguments. Contrition can defuse rage. Olive branches do more good than battle-axes