This part year as I've been reading the Bible, a thread that kept standing out with the kings, especially Saul, is that when the king was concerned about themselves, their kingdom, their reputation, their legacy, they were a terrible king. That's the great juxtaposition I kept seeing over and over again between Saul and David.

Saul always cared about what people thought of him. About how other people's actions or opinions would affect his legacy. David, almost to a fault, left everything in God's hands. Battling Goliath: "God saved me from lions and bears, He will save me and defeat this uncircumcised heathen". Having rocks thrown by a Benjamite while fleeing Absolom: "who knows, maybe God put these words in his mouth". David cared most about what God thought and left his life and kingdom in God's hands.

Something I want to trace out is this thread through Saul's life. As I've been journalling I've been noting every time I saw the thread sticking out, so now I'm planning to go trace it back and weave it together into a whole picture.

While I do that, I'll probably share another thread that I properly wove together last year from the Exodus story. So what I share from that will be slightly modified version of a series I wrote out for our weekly Kingdom Builder's devotional while we still posted them last year. But while I'm being a little lazy repurposing and posting that, I'll be working to pull on threads from Saul and see what picture comes out to share.