If it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth-shemesh, then it is he who has done us this great harm, but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us; it happened to us by coincidence. 1 Samuel 6:9
With repetitive drug use, I eventually numbed my conscience so that, after a while, I was no longer concerned with right and wrong. I did, however, remain terrified of consequences. The thought of what would happen if anyone found out kept me awake at night. Every time I diverted a bottle of pills, my fear would explode as I grew paranoid, thinking that every little glance from others meant something. If anything unusual happened, or if I encountered any inconvenience, I assumed that I’d been discovered or that God was punishing me.
When a few days went by though, and no one confronted me, I’d realize that I’d gotten away with it. Suddenly, I’d look back at the previous few days in a new light. Nobody knew. That was just paranoia. Those little frustrations weren’t God punishing me. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened. With renewed confidence, I’d then feel free to get another bottle of pills, starting the whole cycle over again. It was a miserable existence. I should have listened to my fear. It may have been irrational to think that every look from others was about my drug use, but the fact that I had the fear in the first place meant that I was courting disaster.
This is where the Philistines found themselves in today’s passage. In the story, the Philistines defeated Israel in battle, carrying off the ark of the covenant. Intending to celebrate it as a symbol of victory, they instead experienced death and destruction wherever the ark went. Finally, after months of misery, they decided to send it back . . . maybe. They put the ark on a cart yoked to two cows and let it go. If the cows take the ark back to Israel, then we know it was God who has been punishing us. If the cows go nowhere, then all that death and destruction was just a coincidence (my paraphrase).
Most of us have probably experienced something similar. We’ve committed some sin and then something bad happened, and we wondered if the two were connected. Then, if the bad thing just went away, we breathed a sigh of relief and changed nothing. Whether or not the sin and the trial were divinely connected though, hardly matters. If we’re convicted of some evil deed, and if we fear the consequences, then we should abandon the behavior that caused the fear. Fear of consequences for our self-destructive behavior isn’t irrational or coincidental. It’s God giving us the opportunity to repent. And that’s an opportunity we should always take.