Seeing the Darkness of Injustice

My car rego is coming up soon and as part of the rego check I know what they're going to look at.

They're going to look at the windscreen and the tyres and the indicators and the headlights and the taillights and they'll also look at the brakes.

For my car to be roadworthy they don't care how well it goes but they need to know that my car will stop.

Knowing the number of car accidents I've heard about recently, even among people at church, maybe you're not sure whether the brakes are tested at rego checks.

But can you imagine what would happen if they didn't test brakes? A no-brakes world would be terrifying, scary, wouldn't it? Scary for pedestrians, scary for drivers, scary even if you stayed at home.

That's what a no-breaks world would be like.

And this world with no breaks is what we see in our passage today.

There are no breaks on the behavior of David's sons.

They do whatever they want.

And there are no breaks from their father, King David.

When his sons sin, David does nothing to slow it down or stop it.

There's no justice from him.

And as we see the darkness of injustice in this passage and in our world, it's meant to produce in us a longing, a hope for a better world, a better future, better than what we see in the two no-breaks episodes of this passage.

As we see injustice blindly allowed, as we see injustice selfishly avenged under David's compromised kingship.