God's Boys will be good boys!
It seems a blessing to be a part of a big family, except when it comes to the area of gossip. A story or an identity of being one of the people in a large family can follow you for the rest of your life. We have a pecking order set up in a family and as the eldest child, eldest son, or just one of the older ones, we are often the perpetrators of the identities of our younger siblings.
I often tell you guys how, we would gang up on Amy or Jo, or the "Flora Dora's" as if for sport. You are a ... and any number of categories would follow and we would agree that that was what they were. A Beggar, was the worst thing, in our family to have been. Don't let someone come to the car or on the walk, with a piece of candy or gum from someone else. The family labeler would be set upon them and they would have to live for a long time to come with that dilineation.
I see David, living out that scene in Goliath, as his brothers castigate him in the usual way. He was used to it. As we become, when we are members together under the same father. It became the gas, as it were that fueled his antipathy to the godless and cursing of Goliath. It made him pull out his resume, to King Saul. No, I am not just Jesse's youngest and out here to spy on my older brothers. I am first, a creation of God and I know the love of God, if not the love of my older siblings.
I pray, dear son, that the faults of your siblings, would guide your heart, not to seek vengeance, as is the encouragement of some; but, that it would guide you to "FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!"
The Good Fight is knocking down the strongholds of the enemy. The Good Fight is putting a rock in the head of Goliath. Don't spend so much time defending your name, as you spend defending the name of the God of Glory. He alone is Worthy of defense and honor. In that way, David was a man after God's own heart. He could have been rolling in the grass fighting his brothers at what they said to him, instead of seeing the enemy for who he was, the one speaking against the God of Glory!
