Michal
2 Samuel 3:14; 6:16
Very few men would have been able to live with her. She was one of those women who can’t get along with a man—any man. She peers from the window of her palatial environment and looks with cold indifference down into the streets of the city to behold the man who is her husband. But she feels no connection with him. No bond. So it was with Michal and David. Two people living together but not joined together.
Michal is the sad seed of a callous father who failed to walk with God. Her eyes were dulled with the disillusionment that comes from having no model of godly marriage. Her relationship with her father had affected her perception of all men. His greed and ambition had taught her to be cynical rather then selfless, guarded rather than generous. And now her marriage yields only a harvest of bitterness and resentment. Planted firmly in the soil of her past, that root of bitterness now rises to haunt her and ruin her chances at happily-ever-after. In fact, she is so bitter that she resents her husband’s happiness.
Almost any other woman would have been delighted to see the joy on her husband’s face, the glide in his stride, the excitement in his eyes as he returns to her, wet with the precious anointing of an encounter with God. But Michal vividly reminds us that when a woman’s heart is bitter, her eyes are blind.
Michal looks out the window, but she cannot see. She cannot see that the man she married was in no way like the man she now beholds that he has changed and that for the rest of her life, she can enjoy the fruit of that transformation. But she is blind, and the look she gives David is the mockery of a smile, a sneer.
It is a tragedy, but it is not all Michal’s fault. Her father had failed her long before she failed David. Her father had planted that bitter root in sweet water that contaminated her perception and disrupted her peace. And now she cannot understand her husband.
I wish that all fathers knew how important it is to provide their daughter s with the proper perception of masculinity. For long after the fathers are gone, the husbands will have to live with the fruit. Michal is fresh fruit gone bad, and she has left a bitter taste in David’s mouth.
My sister don’t dampen your husband’s desire to dance. If God has given him joy and peace, celebrate with him! If you want to be loved and adored, you must be able to celebrate his successes. If you fail to appreciate what God has given you, what you see coming in you may later see walking out because you haven’t known how to receive the man God sent back home to you.
If you are one of those lonely, bitter wives, take heart, my sister. God is a God of new beginnings. If your past has limited you, shake it off before it destroys your future. And, start this day out new. The next time you see your anointed husband dancing toward you, clap your hands, open your doors, and tell him to come on in. It’s time to celebrate.
2 Samuel 3:14
(14) So David sent messengers to Ishbosheth. Saul’s son, saying. “Give me my wife Michal, whom I betrothed to myself for a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.”
6:16
(16) Now as the ark of the Lord came into the City of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter, looked through a window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.