When I was five, my mother was too obsessed with finding bargains the day after Christmas to realize that I had been left behind. We were visiting the great city of El Paso, Texas, where there was, in the middle of downtown, a huge park with a pool of alligators as the main attraction. I called it Alligator Park and those creatures fascinated me. So, finding myself lost in the store, I found my way to Alligator Park and sat on a bench watching people rush past me on their way to work or the stores. I remember feeling so lost. If only a kind lady smiled at me as I passed; but nobody did. At five years old, I knew how Lodebar felt.
Lo-Debar (Lodebar) was a royal place during the reign of King Saul and later King David. Mephibosheth, son of Prince Jonathan and grandson of King Saul, was five years old when his father and grandfather fell in the battle of Mount Gilboa. The child’s nanny, upon learning of this calamity, fled with the child from Gibeah, the royal residence, and stumbled. Due to dropping the boy to the ground, Mephiboseth was permanently paralyzed by debris. He was taken to the land of Gilead, where he and the nurse found refuge in Machir’s house at Lo-Debar (Lodebar).
Lodebar was a gloomy place without pasture, without hope, utter desolation.
You ended up in Lodebar when the storms of life crushed you and you believed that life was over for you.
Perhaps my love for this story has a lot to do with being repeatedly told that I was the shame of my pastor-father’s church. When one feels ashamed from the first moment, beliefs of worthlessness are established, as well as feelings of fear and self-doubt that must be fought and conquered much later in life. It makes you hide from life, either through passive behavior or through overcompensating behavior.
I imagine this five-year-old’s nurse telling him that they would surely be killed if the new King David found out they were alive. I can hear her say to Mephibosheth: This is King David’s fault that you are like this. You know what would have happened to you after your grandfather died. They would have killed you because it is the custom! If I hadn’t run with you, you would be dead, and if I hadn’t been so scared, I wouldn’t have dropped you. It’s David’s fault you’re crippled, but he’s better crippled than dead.
Some years later, when King David had subdued all of Israel’s adversaries, he began to think of the family of Jonathan, his best friend with whom he had made a covenant. David had made a covenant with Jonathan that when he became king he would never cut off his kindness from Jonathan’s family. So He asked his counselors if there was anyone left from Saul’s (and Jonathan’s) house whom He could bless. Hears took the initiative to search for Jonathan’s relative who might still be alive. All his counselors could think of was that there was this crippled boy, Jonathan’s son, hiding in the wilderness. David told them to find this boy and bring him right away.
Now I can imagine what was going on in Mephibosheth’s mind when the King’s men came to his door and told him that King David was summoning him. Think of all that this nurse, whom you had entrusted with your life, had told you. She had lived in fear of David since she was five years old! I guess Mephiboseth thought this was the end for him. He would die.
But what choice did he have? Surrounded by these representatives of the King, he had no choice but to move on with them. Little did he know that what brought him out of hiding was grace, the grace of King David’s absolute authority.
Now move on. Imagine Mephiboshet sitting at the King’s table! It looks like royalty; smells of royalty; speak like royalty; and with his crippled legs under the King’s Table, he appears to be royalty to everyone else at court!
Each of us has experienced our own Lodebar. Some go into hiding due to the shame of divorce, abuse, or financial disaster. But everyone has been to Lodebar. And it is only the benevolent grace of the Almighty King of Kings, Jesus Christ, that can lead us out of our hiding place. Sometimes the shame we feel or believe is nothing more than a lie that we have believed in. Someone fed us the lie and for some reason we believed it.
Even those who seem to have everything valued by this fallen world can get lost in Lodebar. They are lost. They need a Savior, a King, who takes the initiative to bring them out of their doom. His name is Jesus, The Name above all names, and he offers redemption to all the residences of Lodebar!
Sometimes those who know Christ as Redeemer and Savior can visit a psychological Lodebar. The length and bleakness of the visit depends on how intimately they know God and His sovereignty.
A husband betrays his wife after thirty years of marriage and everything that she thought was her life is now gone. Who is she now? Was the entire Christian marriage just one big sham? Where can she go? Every place they shared is awkward. Even friends are now distant, awkward, and suspicious. Trapped in Lodebar, she cries out to God: Is this how a daughter of yours should live? People look at her with that question in their eyes: What did YOU do to break up your marriage?
Creedence Clearwater Revival had a hit song, Lodi in 1964. Though not as profound as being spiritually lost, John Fogerty offered a miniature view of being lost and trapped, both literally and metaphorically. So this is not a strange concept, even for those who do not know Jesus. It is not fun to be trapped in any way.
Even at five years old, he knew what it was like to feel trapped and lost. It was the first of many times, and God has extended His Grace to me in the most unusual and unexpected ways. I suspect that I will feel the attraction to Lodebar over and over again before meeting Jesus face to face; but every time I visit it is a shorter visit than the last. It’s not who I am, but who I am that makes all the difference. He knows the way out of Lodebar and I know the way to Him!
© 2008 April Lorier
Sources:
I Samuel and II Samuel, Old Testament
Covenant between David and Jonathan: 1 Samuel 18, 20, 23
http://www.biblestudytools.net/Dictionaries/SmithsBibleDictionary/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan