What God says of us

St Paul includes a passage in Acts 13 in which God says, “I have found my servant David, a man after my own heart".

It is a challenge to square what God says about him with the picture of David that we find in the Hebrew scriptures. There, we see a flawed human being. He was a father who had various struggles with his children, and his son Absolem in particular. He was an unfaithful husband who arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle and then married his wife. His name is linked with the psalms in which a whole range of human emotions from the experience of God’s loving care in Psalm 23 to a profound recognition of failure and sin in Psalm 51 can be found. David was a flawed human being, yet was still declared by God to be a man after my own heart.

When I was pondering what God said of David, I came across a song entitled “You Say” by Lauren Daigle that I had not heard before but touched a chord in me. The chorus goes:

“You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
You say I am strong when I think I am weak
You say I am held when I am falling short
When I don’t belong, you say I am yours
And I believe, I believe what you say of me”.

The scriptures have many stories like that of David where individuals who are prone to mistakes and failures still hear words of encouragement and support from God.

God says, “I will be your God, and you will be my people”. He says of Israel, a nation that constantly broke the covenant God made with them that it will be a light to the nations.

We see this in the New Testament in the story of Peter. He once asked Jesus to depart from him as he was a sinful man and during the trial of Jesus denied knowing him. Yet this is what God says of Peter “you are the rock on which I will build my Church”. Peter came to believe and be what God said of him.

Paul was a persecutor of the Church until he encountered Jesus on the road to Damasus. Later God says, “I want Paul and Barnabas set aside for the work to which I have called them”. They believed what God said and so the persecutor of the Church became the Apostle to the Gentiles.

In these days of social media, we as flawed human beings can find that all kinds of comments are made about us, some positive but many that are negative and hurtful. It becomes imperative in such circumstances to tune in to what God says of us: 

That we are loved
That we are strong
That we are held
That we belong to him
And to believe what God says of us.

Fr Patrick O’Shea lives and works in Aotearoa/New Zealand