Don't let me be a Nabal

Everyone knows that pregnancy and child-rearing could easily be called “open advice season.” Everyone a pregnant woman meets has an opinion or an experience to share. Each has a deep conviction about which practices work and which don’t, which things to worry about and which to ignore, whether to buy a crib or take one used—or, as they did in the olden days, to just remove your bottom dresser drawer and stow the papoose in there. “You won’t miss the drawer space,” they say. “Your regular clothes don’t fit anyway.”

I am so new to motherhood I have almost no opinions of my own, leaving me—at this point—much more needy of advice than wary of it. But I had to stop for a photo op when I caught sight of an almost-irresistible onesie on a sale rack last week. It said, “My mom doesn’t want your advice.”

I didn’t pay $3 for that onesie, because in my heart I believed it too sassy for any self-respecting infant. It was partly that, and partly because I had just read the story of Abigail and Nabal in the Bible.

I love the freedom I feel when I sit above my Bible with a pen in my hand. I can underline whatever I want, whatever piece of Scripture my heart longs to return to. Sometimes I choose those warm-bed-in-the-cold-winter verses that you expect people to underline, the “all things work together for good” kinds of verses. But at other times, my pen can’t resist the fragments of text that go too often untouched. Last week, for instance, it fell on this verse from 1 Samuel 25:

“Now the name of the man was Nabal, and the name of his wife Abigail. The woman was discerning and beautiful, but the man was harsh and badly behaved …” (ESV).

The story had me hooked. Several verses later, I got the insight into Nabal’s character that struck me to the heart. In verse 17, Nabal’s servants testify against him: “… he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him.”

For this verse I shelled out underlines and margin stars. Here we find an off-handed definition of worthlessness of character: total unapproachability, ungenerosity, absolute imperviousness to advice. An unteachable person is, in the words of the Bible, a “Nabal.” A fool.

We all know Nabals. The extreme examples are men and women with loud opinions who never waver and cannot submit to authority. They find their own ideas the most compelling in the world. They condescend and refuse to be molded. They are bullies in their independence, soapbox-standers, and the nightmares of church leadership.

But we do not all just know Nabals. In our own ways, we all are Nabals. I know that I enter a perilous season in which my pride will either be undone or undo me. In this season I could just as easily resent help as benefit from it. So I ask God, “Please, don’t let me be a Nabal.”