One of the servants told Abigail, Nabal’s wife, “David sent messengers from the wilderness to give our master his greetings, but he hurled insults at them. Yet these men were very good to us. They did not mistreat us, and the whole time we were out in the fields near them nothing was missing. Night and day they were a wall around us the whole time we were herding our sheep near them. Now think it over and see what you can do, because disaster is hanging over our master and his whole household. He is such a wicked man that no one can talk to him.”
Abigail acted quickly. She took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, five seahs of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys. Then she told her servants, “Go on ahead; I’ll follow you.” But she did not tell her husband Nabal.
As she came riding her donkey into a mountain ravine, there were David and his men descending toward her, and she met them. David had just said, “It’s been useless—all my watching over this fellow’s property in the wilderness so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good. May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him!”
I think it is fair to say that David was a pretty mad about Nabal’s treatment of him. He was ready to wipe Nabal’s family off the map completely. …Enter our Dark Horse – Abigail.
Upon learning of her husband’s careless words and behavior, she set into action without a minute to spare. She set out on a mission to save her household and prevent unnecessary bloodshed. She enlisted the help of her servants, but knew the importance of going herself to try to right what wrongs had been made. She placed herself in the position of a peacemaker.
A peacemaker is someone who is actively trying to reconcile people with God and with one another. They take initiative and move toward conflict in order to resolve it. That’s Abigail! She didn’t wait – she acted quickly and moved with great purpose.
But what does it look like to be a peacemaker in our lives? In our relationships? My guess is that your neighbor isn’t strapping on a sword and coming over to take you out…but is there a brewing conflict in one of your relationships that could be headed off with you being intentional and taking the initiative to sort it out? Take some time today to hear from God and then to act on where he leads.
