Desperate bachelor finds potential wife out in garden

Perhaps you heard about the elderly bachelor who had grown tired of being alone, cooking his own meals, washing his own clothes and cleaning his own house. He desperately wanted to find himself a wife.

About that time, he looked out the window and saw a new neighbor lady out digging in the garden, so he decided to go introduce himself.

“Well, hello,” he said with all the charm he could muster. “What are you up to?”

“I just killed my husband, chopped him into pieces, and buried him here in the garden.”

“Oh,” he said, his eyebrows arching with interest. “So, that means you’re single.”

Feeling desperate can lead to poor choices. David, the Old Testament hero who is described as a man after God’s own heart, learned that the hard way.

You may recall that King Saul was trying to kill David, and, in a fit of desperation, he fled to the land of the Philistines, apparently thinking he could live among Israel’s enemies, out of the reach of King Saul.

So, instead of trusting God to protect him, David went to, of all places, Gath, which happened to be the hometown of the nearly 10-foot-tall Goliath, the soldier he had killed with a sling and stone.

Of course, the Philistines recognized David immediately, and, again, instead of trusting God to protect him, he took things into his own hands by pretending to be crazy. He was so convincing that the Philistine leader told his men to send him away.

I’m convinced David left there a much wiser man, having seen that desperation led him to make a poor choice that could have easily cost him his life.

David, like the rest of us, made his share of poor choices. His are spelled out in vivid detail for everyone to read in the pages of the Bible.

The late great George Jones, before he died, recorded the song Choices. In it, he sang:

I’ve had choices

Since the day that I was born

There were voices

That told me right from wrong

If I had listened

No, I wouldn’t be here today

Living and dying

With the choices I’ve made

The truth is we do live and die by the choices we make. That’s why we need to make right choices, including in who we choose for a spouse.

May we never be as desperate as the elderly bachelor who flirted with the woman who had just murdered, chopped up, and buried her husband.