All About Love - Relating with Women of the Bible – Part 2Намуна

MICHAL – WHAT SHE DID FOR LOVE

I was trapped in a world where I would do anything for love. Yet, what is love without God? I’m glad I know now that God is love and the source of love.

Ironically, Michal’s name means “who is like God.” Almost always remembered for her smirks over David’s ‘undignified’ dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, could there be love in this cold-hearted, sarcastic woman?

Michal wasn’t the first offered to David for a wife. When David protested his unworthiness to marry a king’s daughter, Saul didn’t wait in giving Merab to someone else. But when Saul found out Michal loved David, he moved quickly to lay a snare on David. Poor Michal, she was just used by her father to get to David! But, couldn’t there have been affection from David for Michal since he didn’t cower to give Saul the exorbitant bride-price in Philistine heads? The Bible wasn’t clear on that.

What is clear, however, is the courage Michal had to protect David from her father’s attempts to kill him. She warned David of the plot on his life and helped him escape through the window, placing an idol and some goat’s hair to make believe it was David sleeping on the bed. When Saul learned of her deception, she lied, claiming that David threatened her life. That was love in action!

How far would you go to protect your beloved’s life? Michal evidently loved David enough to risk even her life. Who knows what a cuckoo father-king would do, who’s burning with hatred for her husband?

Yet, it seemed that love would be unrequited. Because of Saul’s continued hostility, David didn’t return for Michal for several years, which caused Saul to give Michal away to another man. How she must have felt abandoned and lonely in David’s absence! How helpless that she had no say about her marriage!

Yet, after Saul’s death, David asked for Michal’s hand again. But what’s clear this time is that their union wasn’t blissful and that Michal wouldn’t do anything anymore for David. She didn’t even show kingly submission, hence, Michal’s annoyance by David’s worship. Perhaps, the judgment of barrenness was a result of her despising the Lord’s worship.

True love in action is demonstrated in submission to our spouse, regardless of what our hearts feel. To love a man without loving God is futile, dear princess.