Having a Bad Day
The only advantage to having very little hair and having it short is you completely avoid “bad hair days,” even in humid Houston. The sorrowful news is one can declare bad days of all kinds, having nothing to do with hair. We are humans: we can concoct reasons to lament the day, rooted in anything whatsoever, important, or unimportant. We want to manage or control all we can to ensure our wellbeing; it is a shame so many things are unmanageable or out of control for us.
As we read the saga of the kings of Israel in 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, we learn that David the king has a really messed up family unlike the rest of us. On second thought, maybe he is not the only one. Much frustration in families comes, because connected people care for each other, but cannot in any healthy way control each other. In the best scenario, we are all free agents, with our own individual wills, who can come to an agreement within a common good. God help us get there.
King David has a son, Absalom. Like the whole of David’s life, this is a messy story. Absalom is poorly advised by a counselor named Ahithophel. In betrayal to the king, Ahithophel convinced Absalom to work a revolt and a coup d’ état. It was a serious effort but short-lived. David had been inching closer to reconciling with his estranged son, which made him an outright enemy. Even so, when David’s commanders outlined the attack strategy, the king told them, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.”
Alas, poor David: his instructions to protect his son did not pan out. The king’s servants attacked Absalom’s men of Israel from three angles. Though the young man’s name means “father in peace” his father’s servants offered no peace. The fleeing army was backed up against the dense and difficult Forest of Ephraim. Absalom fled on his mule. Through the trees he rode until the gnarled branches of an oak caught him by his long thick hair:
His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on. And ten young men, Joab’s armor-bearers, surrounded Absalom and struck him, and killed him. (2 Samuel 18:9, 15)
In earlier chapters readers learn that Absalom’s handsome appearance and his impressive thick hair were part of his self-pride and vanity. Now that hair is his demise. The overconfident son, angling to overtake his father’s throne, now literally loses his own royal seat; the mule, the usual mount for princes and kings. The mule passes on, leaving him dangling between heaven and earth.
Yes, is a bad day for all. His name may mean “father in peace” but Absalom leaves his father in agony. As Robert Alter, the Hebrew scholar and commenter puts it, “Now, the eloquent David is reduced to a sheer stammer of grief, repeating over and over the two Hebrew words, “beni ’Avshalom”, “my son, Absalom…David is the anguished father who would rather have died, that his son might have lived.”:
The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33)
Let us look toward a better day, a genuinely good day. This is a week of Sunday scriptures that remind us that we must cry out to God. We have difficulties in life, and we often complicate them even further trying to extract ourselves on our own. It does not work. We must listen to our best sensibilities. We must seek God’s wisdom, steering away from tendencies toward pride and greed. God is faithful; we are well guided by the Holy Spirit. It takes listening in silence and humility to hear these directions toward the true peace of God.