May 29 – Man proposes, but God disposes

May 29
2 Samuel 14:1-15:22
John 18:1-24
Psalm 119:97-112
Proverbs 16:8-9

2 Samuel 14:3 – Interesting contrast between God’s Words to Nathan to David, and Joab’s words to the woman of Tekoah.

2 Samuel 14:5 – Today with Secret Service protection, we’re not used to commoners having direct access to a high ranking government official. Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War, was directly accessible by anyone who wanted to talk to him:

One aspect of White House life that made family life particularly difficult for the Lincolns was the mansion’s open-door policy to the public, war notwithstanding. Virtually from Lincoln’s first day in office, a crush of visitors besieged the White House stairways and corridors, climbed through windows at levees, and camped outside Lincoln’s office door “on all conceivable errands, for all imaginable purposes.”

Neither custom nor security precautions shielded the president from his voraciously demanding public. Office-seekers were the biggest drain on the presidents time and energy—among them, his wife’s own relatives—crowding the hallways all the way down the front stairs in an endless effort to importune him for lucrative government appointments.

And at the center of this stage stood three cousins, King George V of Great Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, whose complicated family relationships partly fueled the international animosity that led to the horrors of The Great War.