Occupational therapy!  That is what my CrossFit workouts resemble.  Occupational therapy teaches you how to do familiar things in a new and easier way in order to accommodate physical weaknesses or limitations.  I have come to accept that I am, almost without exception, the oldest guy in our CrossFit box.  I am the king of “modifications” and “scaled” workouts.  Rare is the WOD in which I can click Rx on my results.   One modification, I have yet to be able to make, however, is to get the rest of my Wod-mates to accept  that 80’s rock is the best music to set the pace for the workout.  My hips don’t hop, and the only pop I am concerned about is the pop in my knee.

One of my favorites from those BC days was Rush.  Their innovative musicality coupled with evocative lyricism resonated with me as a teenager.   A favorite album was Moving Pictures.  The album’s concept was the great power of poetry and music to tell moving stories through snapshots of life.  Probably all of us have been moved to sorrow, joy, reflection or action by an iconic song, picture or story.  But no story has more moving pictures than the story of redemption, unfolded in the Bible, with its themes of mercy and grace and good triumphing over evil.  The Bible is no mere moralistic litany, it is a living and active story of a mighty hero who through self-sacrifice and great power defeated the arch-enemy of all men, sin and death.  In every vignette, every chapter, this story is unveiled in moving pictures.

The story of David and Mephibosheth from 2 Samuel 9 is, perhaps, one of the most moving of these pictures. Mephibosheth was the last member of the family of King David’s arch-enemy and predecessor, Saul.  Mephibosheth’s father, Jonathan, and grandfather, Saul, were killed in battle on the same day.  In the ensuing chaos, Mephibosheth’s nurse dropped him, rendering him lame for the rest of his life.   He was a ruined man from a ruined house.  His name meant “shameful thing.” He was a fugitive and lived every day in the fear of being discovered and brought to judgment.   Yet David’s love for Mephibosheth’s father, Jonathan, awakened in him a desire to show God’s mercy to any remaining members of Saul’s family, for the sake of his friend.  David searches and finds Mephibosheth, restores to him his ancestral lands, and treats him as one of his own sons.  What a shocking and tender story of grace, kindness, and mercy.  The moving picture of David’s kindness to a poor, lame, ruined man reveals the even more moving picture of God’s grace, kindness, and mercy toward us, who spiritually speaking, are far worse off than Mephibosheth.

Matthew Henry says it well in summing up the story of David and Mephibosheth.

Now because David was a type of Christ, his Lord and son, his root and offspring, let his kindness to Mephibosheth serve to illustrate the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards fallen man, which yet he was under no obligation to, as David was to Jonathan. Man was convicted of rebellion against God, and, like Saul’s house, under a sentence of rejection from him, was not only brought low and impoverished, but lame and impotent, made so by the fall. The Son of God enquires after this degenerate race, that enquired not after him, comes to seek and save them. To those of them that humble themselves before him, and commit themselves to him, he restores the forfeited inheritance, he entitles them to a better paradise than that which Adam lost, and takes them into communion with himself, sets them with his children at his table, and feasts them with the dainties of heaven. Lord, what is man, that thou shouldst thus magnify him!

Join us this Lord’s Day, August 5, as we as we examine the moving picture of David and Mephibosheth and consider the greatest of God’s kindness toward us in the gospel.    We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.