“As 13th in line in my own kingdom, I didn’t stand a chance.
I knew I’d have to marry into the throne somewhere...”
- Hans, Frozen.
With the birth of our third kid, we’ve officially become a family that exceeds federal guidelines. And if you watch for it, it is fascinating to watch the sibling dynamics unfold between the 3 of them. We have our resident oldest, who of course holds her title with ever-increasing responsibility and eye rolling. Then we have our once-youngest, now middle child, who is managing his displacement fairly well. And then the baby, who only knows at the moment that life revolves around her.
The reality is, there is a certain amount of truth to the “birth order theory”. In fact, more traditional families routinely reinforce these expectations with rules that the firstborn will take their parent’s first name, or are required to marry first, or take care of their siblings.
So it would be one thing to say that David was not planning to be king. After all, he is the youngest of eight sons. But in fact, he was not even in a direct lineage to the throne. It was more like Queen Elizabeth II being suddenly thrust into the most powerful position in the land, when that wasn’t even part of plan B, plan C, or even plan X.
So David was not doing a lot of “image management”. After all, he never planned to have a public image that would need to be managed. He probably didn’t have a wealth of people to influence in any way. The majority of his time wasn’t even spent with people, it was spent with sheep. It is challenging for most of us to be alone for even a few hours without human interaction. The pandemic certainly tested this theory. But imagine a lifelong career without coworkers. Of course David was happy to deliver food and supplies to the front line – he needed some human companionship.
But in this isolation, he was also spending uninterrupted hours with God. I believe this created something in David that was more important than any lineage or title. It created a dependent, childlike faith. And God used that as a genuine foundation for royalty