We have been invited to come to Jesus Christ! Our Lord wants us to come to him just as we are, and when we come, we find that he welcomes us, heals our souls and pays our debts. He is like David receiving his strange recruits at the Cave of Adullam..
On two occasions, King saul had thrown his spear at David in an attempt to kill him for he had great hatred for David. At last David saw that it was better for him to leave Saul's court, and he went about from place to place hiding from him. We have account in the first book of Samuel,of some of his narrow escapes, for Saul pursued him,and tried to get his people to betray him into his hands.
When the news spread that David was hiding in the Cave of Adullam, his family and a number of men joined him. They were the beginning of his army, with others joining them latter. Some of them were strange recruits for this is how they were described: "Everyone that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt,and everyone that was dicontented gathered themselves unto him; and he became their Captain. They could be likened to the Kikuyu people who lived in the forest areas of the Rift Valley during the time when Moi was in Power in Kenya. They were brought there from the Central Provence, by the colonial Government to work in the forests. But by the time Moi came to power they had already established themselves, and they considered the Rift Valley as their home,
In vallages like Ndothua, the Kikuyu lived as squatters in Government land. They were allowed to cultivate chunks of land allocated to them by forest officers. They would clear the land allocated, and then plant trees along with their own crops. When the saplings matured, the squatter was allocated another uncleared chunk and the process continued. But this process was interrupted by Moi when he came into power.
The Kikuyus were completely ejected from the forest areas, and their place taken by other groups of people who did not care about reforestation. They completely destroyed the trees that had been planted by the kikuyus.as they cleared land for cultivation, and did not bother to replenish them. Many of the Kikuyus had no where else to go and are now living as Internally Displaced People in Kenya. This is sad to see as the Kikuyu people have greatly sufferd under different government administrations, as they have been evicted from their lands and dweling places since the British colonial period in Kenya.
The interactions witth David and the training he gave them changed the first recruits into veteran solders. Some excelled in the use of the bow, other could hurl stones with either the right or left hand. They became under his training some of the mighty men so beautifully described in chronicles 12. The love of his mighty men was such that he had but to express a longing for water from the well of Bethlehem, and three of them at once were willing to risk their life to satisfy that desire. It is a beautiful picture of how our Lord Jesus Christ changes those who come to him, and how he finds his home in the hearts of those who love him, while he is in exile from his Kingdom.
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