2 Samuel 1-3: The King Pleased the People

They buried Abner in Hebron, and the king wept aloud at Abner’s tomb. All the people wept also.
 The king sang this lament for Abner:
   “Should Abner have died as the lawless die?
 Your hands were not bound,
   your feet were not fettered.
You fell as one falls before the wicked.”
   And all the people wept over him again.
 Then they all came and urged David to eat something while it was still day; but David took an oath, saying, “May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if I taste bread or anything else before the sun sets!”
 All the people took note and were pleased; indeed, everything the king did pleased them. - 2 Sam. 3: 33-36 NIV

All those who followed after Saul rather than David would have seen David differently if he had reacted as it is our usual inclination to do so.  If he had gloated over the deaths of Saul, Jonathan, and Abner they would have seen him as someone who was calloused and power grabbing, not worthy of being king.  Instead, they saw someone touched deeply by the death of even his enemies.  Someone they could follow. 

In this celebrity filled world, it is difficult to see how it is that when we are weak, and only when we are weak, we become strong.  That message is counter-cultural at the present time.  But as Frederick Buechner puts it:  To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake___even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death___that little by little we start to come alive.  The Sacred Journey, (Harper Collins, New York, 1982) p.107

David knew that.  David carried the grief of the death of Saul, and all who lost their lives so he could advance in power, with him for the rest of his life.  Just as he grieved for Saul and Abner, he would one day grieve for Uriah and his own sons:  the one that died as a result of his sin with Bathsheba as well as Absalom who tried to usurp the throne from his father.

Only those who realize that any rise to power comes at the expense of others are worthy of following. 

2010 Post - 2 Samuel 1-3:  How The Mighty Have Fallen