"And David strapped his sword over his armor. And he tried in vain to go, for he had not tested them. Then David said to Saul, "I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them." So David put them off.
Then he took his staff in his hand and chose five smooth stones
from the brook and put them in his shepherd's pouch. His sling was in his hand, and he approached the Philistine.
And the Philistine moved forward and came near to David, with his shield-bearer in front of him.
And when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance.
And the Philistine said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
the Philistine said to David, "Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field."
Then David said to the Philistine, "You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.
This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel,
and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hand."
When the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine.
And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground.
So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was no sword in the hand of David."
~1 Samuel 17:39-50
This passage was where my study of river rocks and suffering began. It is a familiar story: David and Goliath, the shepherd boy versus the giant. I had read it many times before but this time the wording in verse 40 caught my attention. David had chosen these rocks.
Webster's Dictionary defines the verb, to choose, as:
To pick out; to select; to take by way of preference from two or more things offered; to make choice of.
David was not picking up rocks at random. These would be his only weapons and, since David was a master with his sling, he knew exactly what he was looking for and what would work best. He was carefully choosing the weight, size, shape, and possibly smoothness, of these stones. David was looking for river rocks that had been perfectly prepared for this mission.
There was a process that these "smooth stones" had to go through to become perfectly prepared. A rock is made smooth by tumbling, and I will go more into that process in my future posts. Who knows how long these rocks had been tumbling about in that brook becoming exactly what David needed for that exact time?
There are many lessons in suffering and seeing our circumstances from God's perspective that we can learn from these five smooth stones, the process of tumbling, and David's own life.
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