The Banished Returns

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 94, The Banished Returns.

Second Samuel 14, verse 14. Listen slowly, because this sentence carries more weight than it seems at first:

"We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast."

These words did not come from a prophet, nor from David. They came from the mouth of a woman from Tekoa, sent by Joab, David's general, to tell a made-up story — a parable carefully built to reach the king's heart. And the reason was urgent: Absalom, David's son, had been exiled for years, banished after killing his own brother. And David, though he longed for him — the text says so plainly — did nothing to bring him home.

The woman comes before the king pretending to be a widow with a life-or-death case, and in the middle of her story she drops this line that isn't really about her case at all. It's about David. It's about all of us.

"We are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again." Picture that image for a second. Water on dry ground — it spreads, sinks in, disappears between the grains of dust, and no human hand can gather it back. That is what life is like. Brief. Irreversible. A day gone is a day that cannot be recovered. And if that's true — if the time we have is so short and so fragile — why do we spend so much of it keeping distance from the people we love?

But the line doesn't stop at life's fragility. It turns toward God's own character: "God will not take away life, and he devises means so that the banished one will not remain an outcast." This is one of the most beautiful descriptions of God in the entire Old Testament, and it arrives tucked inside a political parable. God does not sit back passively waiting for the exile to return on his own. He devises means. He engineers pathways. God's grace is not merely an open door — it is God going after the one standing outside.

And the woman of Tekoa is, in effect, holding up a mirror in front of David. She is saying, without saying it outright: you worship a God who seeks out the banished. So why don't you, the king, do the same for your own son?

That question crosses the centuries and lands on you today.

Is there someone you are keeping at a distance? A child, a sibling, an old friend, someone you love but who, out of pride, out of hurt, out of exhaustion, you decided to leave on the outside? Life is spilled water — it does not come back. Every day that passes without reconciliation is a day no one can gather up again.

But the God you serve is not the kind who waits quietly. He devises means. And today He is inviting you to do the same: not to wait for the other person to make the first move, but to be the one who opens the path home.

So here is today's call: think of someone you are keeping at a distance. And take one concrete step — a message, a call, one simple word — to open a way back. Don't wait for the water to dry up completely.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.