Lodebar - Grace Unexpected and Distrusted

When I was five years old, my mother was too obsessed with finding bargains the day after Christmas to notice I had been left behind. We were visiting the big city of El Paso, Texas where there was, in the middle of downtown, a huge park with an alligator pool as the main attraction. I called it the Alligator Park and those creatures fascinated me. So, finding myself lost in the store, I found my way to the Alligator Park and sat on a bench watching people hurriedly pass in front of me on their way to work or stores. I remember feeling so lost. If only one kind lady would smile at me as she passed by; but no one did. At five years old, I knew what Lodebar felt like.

Lo-Debar (Lodebar) was a real place during the reign of King Saul and then of King David. Mephibosheth, the son of Prince Jonathan, and grandson of King Saul was five years old when his father and grandfather fell in the Battle of Mount Gilboa. The child's nurse hearing of this calamity fled with the boy from Gibeah, the royal residence, and stumbled. Because she dropped the child on the ground, Mephibosheth was permanently paralyzed from the waste down. He was carried to the land of Gilead, where he and the nurse found a refuge in the house of Machir at Lo-Debar (Lodebar). Lodebar was a dismal place of no pasture, no hope - total desolation.

You ended up in Lodebar when you were crushed by the storms of life and believed that life was over for you.

Perhaps my love for this story has a great deal to do with being told repeatedly that I was the shame of my pastor-father's church. When one is made to feel shameful from earliest memory, it sets up beliefs of worthlessness, as well as feelings of fear and self-doubt that must be fought and conquered so much later in life. It makes you hide from life, either through passive behavior or through over-compensating behavior.

I can just imagine this five-year-old's nurse telling him they would surely be killed if the new King David ever found out they were alive. I can hear her telling Mephibosheth: This is King David's fault you are like this. You know what would have happened to you after your grandfather died. You would have been killed because it is the custom! If I had not run with you, you would be dead, and if I had not been so afraid, I would not have dropped you. It's David's fault you are crippled, but better crippled than dead.

Some years later, when King David had subdued all the adversaries of Israel, he began to think of the family of Jonathan, his best friend with whom he had made a covenant. David had covenanted with Jonathan that when he became king he would never cut off his kindness from the family of Jonathan. So he asked his advisers if there was anyone left of the House of Saul (and Jonathan) that He could bless. He took the initiative to seek out Jonathan's relatives that might still be living. All his advisers could come up with was there was this crippled kid, son of Jonathan, who was hiding out in the desolate place. David told them to find this boy and bring him immediately.

Now I can just imagine what was going on in the mind of Mephibosheth when the King's men came to his door and told him King David was summoning him. Think of all he had been told by this nurse whom he had trusted with his life. He had lived in fear of David since he was five years old! My guess is that Mephibosheth thought this was the end for him. He would die.

But what choice did he have? Surrounded by these representatives of The King, he had no choice but to proceed with them. Little did he know that the thing that brought him out of hiding was grace – grace from the absolute authority of King David.

Now, flash forward. Picture Mephibosheth sitting at The King's table! He looks like royalty; he smells like royalty; he speaks like royalty; and with his crippled legs under the King's Table, he appears to be royalty to everyone else in the court!

Each of us has experienced our own Lodebar. Some are hiding out because of the shame of divorce, or abuse, or economic disaster. But everyone has been to Lodebar. And it is only the benevolent grace of Almighty King of Kings, Jesus Christ that can bring us out of hiding. Sometimes the shame we feel or believe is nothing but a lie we have believed. Some one fed us the lie, and for whatever reason, we believed it.

Even those who seem to have everything valued by this fallen world can be lost in Lodebar. They are lost. They need a Savior – a King – who takes the initiative of bringing them out of their lost-ness. His name is Jesus, The Name above all names, and He offers redemption to all residences of Lodebar!

Sometimes, those who know Christ as Redeemer and Savior can visit a psychological Lodebar. How long the visit is and how desolate depends on how intimately they know God and His Sovereignty.

A husband betrays a wife after thirty years of marriage and everything she thought her life was about is now gone. Who is she now? Was the whole Christian Marriage just a big sham? Where can she go? Every place they shared is uncomfortable. Even friends are now distant, uncomfortable, and suspect. Stuck in Lodebar, she cries out to God: Is this how a daughter of Yours is meant to live? People look at her with that question in their eyes: What did YOU do to break up your marriage?

Creedence Clearwater Revival had a hit song, Lodi in 1964. Though hardly as profound as being spiritually lost, a thumbnail view of being lost and trapped, both literally and metaphorically, was given by John Fogerty. So this is not a foreign concept, even to those who don't know Jesus. It is no fun being trapped in any way.

Even at five years of age, I knew what it was to feel both trapped and lost. It was the first of many times, and God has extended His Grace to me in the most unusual and unexpected ways. I suspect I will feel the pull toward Lodebar again and again before I meet Jesus face-to-face; but each time I visit is a shorter visit than the time before. It is not because of who I am, but Whose I am that makes all the difference. He knows the way out of Lodebar and I know the way to Him!

©2007-2010 April Lorier Perspective


Sources:
I Samuel and II Samuel, Old Testament
Covenant between David and Jonathan: I Samuel 18, 20, 23
http://www.biblestudytools.net/Dictionaries/SmithsBibleDictionary/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan
http://healingstreamforsurvivors.blogspot.com/2008/02/from-disgrace-by-grace.html