Out Our Way: Along the Covenant Trail with Goliath

Out our way, before I ride, Goliath and I have a time of working out on the lunge line. I also work with his left and right side to make sure he yields to the reins. The reason is simple - horses need a leader to guide them, - either the dominant alpha horse in the herd or the rider. Without a leader, the individual horse will begin to get anxious and lose all common horse sense.

People are also in need of guidance and seek leaders - someone to take responsibility, make decisions for them, and tell them what to do. The problem is, not all leaders are good ones.

In Germany, Adolph Hitler went from chancellor to "führer" - leader. Even the generals backed down before him, although Hitler had never been more than a corporal. Indeed, Churchill. noting the military blunders Hitler made. said Hitler was England's greatest weapon against the Nazis.

In the text today, the prophet Samuel, who had finally succeeded in uniting all 12 tribes into one nation under God, grew old and the people began to panic. Like many great leaders and personalities in history, the gifts and talents that made an individual great were seldom passed on to their children. Samuel's offspring were not Samuel.

But what the people forgot was that what made Samuel who he was was not the man, but God. If you will recall, God chose Samuel and raised him up to become the great prophet. And, as Samuel knew, as God raised him to be the prophet of Israel, so God could and would raise another.

Yet despite all the signs and wonders God had performed - from raising up Moses to lead them out of slavery in Eygpt, to raising up Joshua to take them across the Jordon and enter the Promised Land,- to raising up the various judges to take full possession of the land and raising up Samuel to united the 12 tribes into a single nation - they still did not trust God.

They prefered to put their trust in themselves and human wisdom. They demanded a king, just like other nations. Though Samuel reminded them they already had a king in the Lord, they wanted a human king because that was the way of the world.

Like so many today who are convinced they can do a better job than God and their way is better and more advanced, they chose to go their own way.

Just as so many self proclaimed intellectuals in the last century denounced Hitler but embraced Stalin, and so many today reject morility and values in favor of hedonism and social anarchy in the name of social justice, the people of Israel demanded a human king and dictator to rule them as absolute leader instead of God.

And as history has taught us, progress is not made by going downhill, and moving forward in the wrong direction is not progression but regression. Human beings respond to propaganda, slick talk, and easy solutions. As Edmund Burke observed a few hundred years ago, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing." And it is easier to do nothing than to take a stand. Hence the rise of despots and tyrants in supposedly advanced, progressive and civilized nations.

Only when the Kingdom of God, not of man, is the goal is there real hope for humanity and the world. Someone has to be in charge. The question is who?

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John Bruington and Goliath seek to follow the Lord's trail, trusting He knows the way. And also know that when we forget and wander off, He will come searching for His strays to get them back on track.