There’s this amazing woman in the Bible, Abigail, who is a great picture of what being a servant should look like. We’ll talk a little about her, and ways to be a servant like she was.
Let’s make sure we’re on the same page. When I say “servant”, I don’t mean a slave or a servant of some rich king. I mean a person who puts others first and serves them. Abigail was a great servant.
Abigail’s story is found in 1 Samuel 25. I encourage you to go read it right now, but I’ll recap it too. So this guy named David -yeah, the one who killed Goliath with just a sling and a rock, but this is after that- was in the wilderness one day with some other men. There was a very wealthy and snobby man nearby, Nabal, and David sent ten young men to ask Nabal for some food and supplies and stuff like that. Now before I tell you what happened next, you need to know that David and his men were really good guys and had done a fantastic job of watching Nabal’s sheep in the past. But, Nabal didn’t remember David and the good things he had done for him. So when the ten young men asked Nabal for food and supplies, Nabal threw insults at them and said he didn’t remember them or David. When the men reported this to David, he told everyone to strap on their swords, and he did the same. He was plotting to kill Nabal. So while two hundred men stayed behind to watch their supplies, David and four hundred men went up to kill Nabal. Abigail, Nabal’s wife, was a very good person. One of her and Nabal’s servants told her David’s plans to kill Nabal because of his unkindness. He also reminded her that these people were very good to them. Abigail acted quickly and took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five dressed sheep, about sixty pounds of roasted grain, a hundred cakes of raisins, and two hundred cakes of pressed figs, and loaded them on donkeys. Without telling Nabal, Abigail went with her servants and all the stuff to meet David. When they met, Abigail got off her donkey and bowed down with her face to ground and gave him the stuff. David praised God, and didn’t kill Nabal. David actually ended up marrying Abigail later!
Nabal and Abigail were so very different. Nabal was bad, rude, and snobby while Abigail was kind, thoughtful, compassionate, and a servant to others. She saw a need, put David and his men first, then acted quickly on it! She didn’t wait to act on the problem, and she didn’t just sit back and worry about it.
We’re called to love others as we would love ourselves. Abigail’s story paints a clear picture of that, and is a great example of how to do that. I’m not saying you have to give an abundance of food to people who are plotting to kill your husband. But I am saying to put others first, have compassion, and act on it.
Here are some steps to do that:
- Pray and ask God to help you.
- Watch and listen closely for needs.
- Do something good about those needs or in other words, be a servant!
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