Abigail: A Woman of Peace - Pastor Mike Houck | May 10, 2026

So this morning we are, you know, every year pastors feel the obligation to dedicate a message to mothers.

This, but I want you to know that this scripture, this passage has application uh to all everyone, all women and men, but we are focusing on uh Abigail, uh, the woman of peace.

Our key verse is actually out of Proverbs 31, uh verse 26.

Proverbs 31 is uh known as the um the passage of scripture uh uh of a uh a special woman, and often uh messages are preached from that.

Um Proverbs 31, a virtuous woman.

Uh messages are preached from that, often on Mother's Day, but we are only going to take one verse.

She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue.

So if you turn with me in your Bible or your app to 1 Samuel chapter 25, or you can pay attention as the scripture is uh read for you.

1 Samuel 25 · chapter mention

1 Samuel chapter 25.

1 Samuel 25 · chapter mention

Chapter 25.

Now Samuel died, and all Israel assembled and mourned for him, and they buried him in his house at Ramah.

Then David rose and went down to the wilderness of Paron.

And there was a man in Maon whose business was in Carmel.

The man was very rich.

He had three thousand sheep and a thousand goats.

He was shearing his sheep in Carmel.

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.

He was a Calebite.

David heard in the wilderness that Nabal was shearing his sheep.

So David sent ten young men, and David said to the young man, Go up to Carmel and go to Nabal and greet him in my name, and thus you shall greet him.

Peace be to you, and peace be to your house, and peace be to all that you have.

I hear that you have shearers.

Now your shepherds have been with us, and we did them no harm, and they missed nothing all the time they were in Carmel.

Ask your young men, and they will tell you.

Therefore, let my young man find favour in your eyes, for we come on a feast day.

Please give whatever you have at hand to your servants and to your son David.

When David's young men came, they sent all this to Nabal in the name of David, and then they waited.

And Nabal answered David's servants Who is David?

Who is the son of Jesse?

There are many servants these days who are breaking away from their masters.

Shall I take my bread and my water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers, and give it to men who come from I do not know where?

So David's young man turned away and came back and told him all this.

And David said to his men, Every man strap on his sword.

And every man of them strapped on his sword.

David also strapped on his sword.

And about four hundred men went up after David, while two hundred remained with the baggage.

But one of the young men told Abigail, Nabel's wife, Behold, David sent messengers out of the wilderness to greet our master, and he railed at them.

Yet the men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm.

And we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as we went with them.

They were a wall to us both by night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the sheep.

Now therefore, know this and consider what you should do.

For harm is determined against our master, and against all his house, and he is such a worthless man that one cannot speak to him.

Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves and two skins of wine, and five sheep already prepared, and five sias of parched grain, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys.

And she said to her young man, Go on before me, behold, I come after you.

But she did not tell her husband Abel.

And as she rode on the donkey and came down under cover of the mountain, behold, David and his men came down toward her, and she met them.

Now David had said, Surely in vain have I guarded all that this fellow has in the wilderness, so that nothing was missed of all that belong to him, and he has returned me evil for good.

God do so to the enemies of David and more also, if by morning I leave so much as one male of all who belong to him.

When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face, and bowed to the ground.

She fell at his feet and said, On me alone, my lord, be the guilt.

Please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant.

Let not my Lord regard this worthless fellow, Nabal, for as his name is, so is he.

Nabal is his name, and folly is with him.

But I, your servant, did not see the young man of my Lord whom you sent.

Now then, my lord, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, because the Lord has restrained you from blood guilt and from saving with your own hand.

Now then let your enemies and those who seek to do evil to my Lord be as Nabal.

And now let this present that your servant has brought to my Lord be given to the young men who follow my Lord.

Please forgive the trespass of your servant.

For the Lord will certainly make my Lord a sure house, because my Lord is fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be found in you so long as you live.

If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of my Lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living, in the care of the Lord your God, and the lives of your enemies he shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling.

And when the Lord has done to my Lord according to all the good that he has spoken concerning you, and has appointed you prince over Israel, my Lord shall have no cause of grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause, or for my Lord working salvation himself.

And when the Lord has dealt well with my Lord, then remember your servant.

And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet me.

Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you who have kept me this day from blood guilt, and from working salvation with my own hand.

For as surely as the Lord the God of Israel lives, who has restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to meet me, truly by mourning there had not been left to Nabal so much as one male.

Then David received from her hand what she had brought him, and he said to her, Go up in peace to your house.

See, I have obeyed your voice, and I have granted your petition.

And Abigail came to Nabal, and behold, he was holding a feast in his house, like the feast of a king.

And Nabal's heart was merry within him, for he was very drunk.

So she told him nothing at all until the morning light.

In the morning, when the wine had gone out of Nabal, his wife told him these things, and his heart died within him, and he became as a stone.

And about ten days later the Lord struck Nabal and he died.

When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing.

The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.

Then David sent and spoke to Abigail to take her as his wife.

When the servants of David came to Abigail at Carmel, they said to her, David has sent us to you to take you to him as his wife.

And she rose and bowed with her face to the ground and said, Behold, your handmaid is a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord.

And Abigail hurried and rose and mounted a donkey, and her five young women attended her.

She followed the messengers of David and became his wife.

David also took a hinoam of Jezreel, and both of them became his wives.

Saul had given Michael his daughter, David's wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallam.

As I was coming up here, David said to me, Just make sure you preach longer than I do.

And I told him that wasn't going to happen, but it reminds me of a story that I heard, an actual true story.

This was from John Maxwell when he was pastoring in Skyline Wesleyan Church in California.

He had arranged, without really thinking, to have a guest speaker on Mother's Day.

And the guy came in and he was preaching, and he just continued to preach on and on and on.

And of course, you know, on Mother's Day, people have plans and brunches and things that they want to get to.

So people were looking at their watches and getting restless, and this guy just was clueless and just continued to preach.

And finally, this little girl stood up, and the Skyland Wesleyan Church is a church of a few thousand people.

She stood up and she said, Would someone shut that man up?

And John said that as people were leaving, people were handing her like five dollar.

So I I struggled with what to call this uh message.

Um I I I thought, well, maybe I'd say, you know, uh what to do if you're married to an idiot, but I thought that might be a little too-pointed.

Um so I decided to go with uh Abigail, a woman of peace.

So you need to know a few things.

So back in that day, if if you were out and uh as David and his men were, who were basically uh fleeing from the wrath of King Saul, and he had gathered these men, who many of them were also political outcasts, and and uh they had sided with David and they uh became quite a force uh and a force to be reckoned with.

And so uh in the course of events they set up camp, and it happened to be where Nabal was um grazing his sheep, and so um they took advantage of that situation.

Um the the shepherds certainly did because now they had this like volunteer army there to help guard the sheep.

And in that day, when it was time for the sheep to be sheared in the fall and some of the sheep to be slaughtered, it was a time of celebration.

And oftentimes during that time of celebration, the the owner of the animals and the master of the shepherd, uh shepherds, would uh just try to remember everybody who had helped him throughout the course of that season.

And it was again a time of celebration, of feasting, and so, and we saw that Nabal took advantage of that feasting experience and became drunk and everything.

So it was just it was just understood, it was just customary that you would repay those who had been kind to you throughout the season.

However, Nabal did not do that.

David sent uh some messengers to inquire of Nabal is there possibly something that you could share with us uh during this great time of harvest and celebration?

And you understand Nabal's response.

I also want to mention that you say, well, why would someone like Abigail marry someone like Nabal?

Well, in that day she probably had no choice.

If he was a wealthy man, her parents, and because she was beautiful, her parents probably arranged that marriage.

And back then there was this thing called a dowry where you would give your daughter to be married to someone, and there would be an exchange of property, an exchange of gifts.

Um, so you it was not uncommon for uh a woman, a young woman, to be essentially sold or traded off uh for some sheep or some property.

And so it wasn't that she went willingly uh necessarily to be married to this man.

We don't know anything about that.

Whether it was a marriage out of love or a marriage out of family duty or obligation, we have no idea.

But here Abigail finds herself married to this man, Nabal, who had quite a reputation for being a very uh foolish man.

As a matter of fact, uh the word Nabal in Hebrew means fool.

And so um, and so he fulfilled that that role, that namesake.

So Abigail, though, could have exercised a lot of different options.

She had choices that she could have made, and so we want to explore some of those choices uh this this morning.

The first one is this her Abigail's options.

She could have left Nabel a long time ago.

She could have just left.

Um it would have been difficult in that day as women were property, but she could have she could have left him.

She could have lived with him in such a way that he no longer desired uh to keep her as his wife.

And so she could have not fulfilled the functions of a wife, the duties of a wife.

She could have been in that day, in Moses' day, um, uh a man could, if a woman made dinner and she burnt it, um, that could be a reason for uh divorce.

Um men had all of the rights and privileges and women did not.

But yet she, as far as we know, remained faithful to him.

Uh the scripture says in Genesis 2.24, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so.

For in such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved.

God has called you to peace.

For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband?

Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

Only let each person lead the life the Lord has assigned to them and to which God has called him.

This is my rule in all of the churches.

This is Paul in 1 Corinthians writing this to the church.

And the question was, well, uh, what happens if I'm married and as a woman and I become a Christian and my husband is not, can I leave him?

Or vice versa.

If a man becomes a Christian and his wife is not, can can and should I leave her?

And the Apostle Paul instructs them to remain in the condition that you were in.

The situation that you were in is uh in which you were to remain.

And so we see that Abigail certainly fulfilled that function.

Even though her husband was a fool, even though he was a very harsh man, a very foolish man, uh, she remained with him.

Secondly, she could have remained with him and become bitter.

She could have remained with him and become bitter.

Now, through the course of my life, I have encountered many people, both men and women, uh, who have remained in a relationship and they have just become extremely bitter.

They may have stayed for financial reasons because they were worried about how they would be provided for, or for whatever reason, but they became bitter.

In Ephesians 4, 31 it says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice.

And so, regardless of the situation that you are in, as a believer in Jesus Christ, uh you should do everything you can to become, uh to keep from becoming bitter.

Because bitterness has no place in the Christian experience.

Along with all of those other things, wrath and anger and clamor and slander, they they do not belong in the life of a Christian.

I love what John Schiff said.

He said, you either get bitter or you get better.

It's that simple.

You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down.

The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.

And essentially what that says is that you have a choice, you may not choose what happens to you, you may not necessarily even choose the circumstances that you find yourself in.

Things may have happened, and that is, as uh John would say, is a result of fate.

Uh, just just things happen, but you have a choice in how you respond to those.

And you can become bitter or you can allow that experience to make you better.

The choice is really yours.

And there are a lot of people that go around in life and with a kind of a woe is me attitude because this has happened to me, and so they allow that to make them a very bitter person.

And those people, unfortunately, once bitterness takes root, they will find that their life will continue to be one of turmoil because no one likes to be around a bitter person.

And so bitterness will breed bitterness, and it will be, it will, it will flourish like a weed.

People uh we used to have a um uh community garden here, and uh one of the and so in the spring everybody's excited about planting stuff.

It's interesting how in the spring you're excited about planting, but then it comes like July and August.

Nobody's excited about weeding or maintaining anything.

And so I would tell, I would tell there was uh particularly two ladies who love to plant gardens, and I would tell them make your rows 30 inches wide.

If you do that, and and later in the fall or in the in the summer, you get tired of weeding, I can cultivate them, rototellum or whatever, if the rows are straight and they're 30 inches wide.

And they wouldn't do that, they'd be like, Well, that's just too much wasted space.

I could put stuff here and there, and the rows would be crooked and everything.

Well, then there was no way for me to keep that garden weeding.

And so what happened here is that ragweed was prolific.

And with ragweed, just like bitterness, with ragweed, for every year you have ragweed, it will propagate for seven years.

So it just continues to multiply.

And if you don't take care of it, pretty soon your whole property will just be consumed with ragweed.

And so they would get frustrated because come July or August their gardens would be just this high in ragweed, and I would just mow them down.

And then why did you do that?

Because you weren't weeding it.

And ragweed, once it goes to seed, will just propagate more ragweed.

Some people's lives are full of ragweed, they're full of bitterness.

They don't do anything about it, they don't take care of it, and it begins to propagate, and that bitterness and that sourness just continues to the point where nobody wants to be around them.

Thus, they become what?

More bitter.

Bitterness is a choice.

Abigail certainly had reasons to be bitter if she wanted to, but she chose not to.

She could have become an adversary of her husband.

I know many people who.

Well, I shouldn't say many, but I've seen where some folks have become adversarial towards their partner, kind of maybe underhanded or you know, not necessarily blatantly open in their adversarial role, but they they do things to undermine their partner.

Proverbs 21:9 says it is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

Proverbs 21:9

Or it is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman.

Let me say, let me let me speak to this for a minute.

You have to understand that when the scripture was written, the role of women was very different than it is today.

Let me also say, let me read these verses again.

It is better to live in the corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome husband.

It is better to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and fretful husband.

It doesn't matter.

Either way, uh, you don't want to be connected with someone who is quarrelsome and full of strife.

Abigail certainly had reasons to do that.

Her servants knew what kind of man her husband was.

Why?

Because they came and they said, This is the you know, this situation is upon us, and nobody can talk to your husband because he's such a fool.

He no no he he doesn't listen to anybody.

So it was well known what kind of man he was, and and there is no one who would have uh faulted Abigail uh if she had left him, if she had become bitter, um, or if she had become his adversary, secretly plotting against him, turning people against him.

She didn't need to do that.

Everybody else knew who he was.

Number four, she could have chosen to defend her husband and become complicit in his folly and wrongdoing.

She could have said, Well, you know what, my husband isn't a good man, so but you know, there's advantages to living with him.

He is very wealthy, he um uh he obviously is profiting from the way he's behaving, and so I'm gonna be complicit with him.

And there's a story, we don't have time to go into the entire story, but there's a story in 1 Kings 21:15 uh where there's a king by the name of Ahab.

1 Kings 21:15

His wife was Jezebel.

King Ahab was considered one of the worst kings that Israel had.

Um, and his wife certainly was no better.

She probably was actually worse than he was.

As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, Arise, take possessions of the vineyard of Naboth, the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money, for Naboth is not alive, but dead.

Essentially, the story very quickly is that Ahab wanted this field that belonged to this man, Naboth, but Naboth said he would not sell it.

So Ahab threw a hissy fit.

He laid on his couch and he whined and he complained and he moaned, and his wife came in, his wife Jezebel came in and said, What's wrong with you?

And he said, You know, I want to buy this field, but Naboth won't sell it to me.

And so what she does is she conspires to have Naboth killed.

And you can you can go and read that story if you want to know how that happens.

But she conspires to have Naboth killed.

And then once that happens, she says to her husband Ahab, get up, Naboth's dead, go take possession of the field.

And so Abigail couldn't have become like that.

She could have been complicit in her husband's uh in her husband's schemes and in his iniquity, but she did not do that.

Number five, she could have become mired in self-pity.

She could have become mired in self-pity.

One of the saddest things to see is a person who has, and I understand when I'm speaking to a crowd like this, that every one of us has experienced some kind of hurt.

There probably isn't anyone out here who hasn't experienced hurt to some degree.

There's also a number of us that have experienced a certain amount of trauma in our lives.

That's just the nature of life.

I don't mean to diminish it.

Some of you may have experienced worse things than others.

But one thing that is is very sad to see is that when someone has gone through those painful experiences, that they themselves become mired in self-pity.

Woe is me.

You know, uh, you know, the old saying, nobody loves me, everybody hates me.

Guess I'll go eat worms.

Um that kind of attitude, you know.

My husband died, woe is me.

I lost a child, woe is me.

Um I had this traumatic experience, woe is me.

I have this terrible illness, woe is me.

And the problem is that those individuals do not get the help that they need because they are too busy feeling sorry for themselves.

They are mired in self-pity.

And then they'll even begin to think, well, you know, nobody likes me.

But because they're so mired in self-pity, the truth is nobody likes them.

So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Nobody, I have no friends, and then that becomes true because they are so mired in themselves.

See, these people really don't have an issue with self-esteem.

The problem is that they are too self-centered.

They are so self-centered, they think that somehow they are entitled to go through this life without experiencing any pain, without experiencing any hardship, without experiencing any hurt, that somehow God owes them a better life than what they've experienced, and so they feel sorry for themselves.

They are they are completely self-centered.

Everything becomes about them.

And so let me let me ask you this question.

This was put to me um during a time where I probably was being mired in some self-pity because of some things that happened in ministry.

And I remember a man saying to me, he said, Mike, if Jesus Christ, the Son of God, could not live on this earth without getting scarred, what makes you think you're entitled to?

Right.

What makes you think you're entitled?

What makes you so special that somehow you can go through this life without experiencing some hardship, some turmoil?

We all experience loss.

We all experience pain, we all experience trauma.

What makes you so special that you think you should be able to escape it?

And some of the most beautiful stories that have ever been written or ever been told are from people who experienced hardship, experienced trauma, experienced pain, and rose above it.

They rose above it, and they became great people, wonderful people.

And you look at them and say, how could a person like that who has gone through so much be so graceful, be so lovely, have such a positive attitude?

And those people are beautiful.

Why?

Because of the difficulties that they've experienced and they've allowed themselves to overcome.

Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5, 16 through 18, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.

Again, I want to point this out.

He doesn't say give thanks for for all circumstances.

He says, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

And then he also wrote in Romans 12, 3, for by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you, do not think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

We think of thinking more highly of ourselves as being proud, being arrogant, and certainly that is true.

But it all it also means being self-centered, being mired in bitterness or being mired in self-pity.

We think of ourselves more higher, more highly than we than we should.

It is interesting that uh we just completed um our leadership uh course uh that that I have taught.

And so I'll take a little moment to to to uh I don't want this to come off as bragging, but I have mentioned to some of you the course that the path that I'm on uh becoming involved in and John Maxwell's leadership training, and so and so now I am a certified um coach and I'm a certified trainer, and um and those things have just happened.

I want to continue to become a certified speaker, although I'm not as interested in that as the other things, and um a certified personality um uh do personality assessments and gift assessments with that.

And so that that is um that is happening.

And um, so I just completed this leadership course with some of the young men here.

Uh very proud of them, very excited about what what is happening and the and the fact that they've been able to take advantage of this training and this teaching.

But one of the sessions was on attitude.

And um it was uh it was a really good session, and uh we talked about a number of things, you know, that again that attitude is a choice.

You don't get to choose what happens to you, you get to choose how you respond to it and how you deal with it.

And so we talked about we talked about attitude, and I said to the guys, I said, um uh so think about it for a moment.

Um of all the people in the church, who do you think has uh models a really good attitude?

And it was and it was fascinating, it was interesting because they didn't have most of the questions I would ask them, they would have to think about.

Um they and they said uh Debbie and Valerie, and they listed you know a couple of other people, and the and the point being that if you have a positive attitude, if you demonstrate a positive attitude, if you rise above your circumstances and rise above your problems, people take notice.

Yes.

They take notice that that you are different, that you're not mired in self-pity, that you're not feeling uh sorry uh for yourself.

Number six.

Abigail could have escaped with her five servants and left Nabal to face the wrath of David.

I mean, she her servant came and told her, hey, David's mounting up an army of 400 people.

He's gonna come against your husband Abel, and he has promised to slay everyone in the household.

I mean, this was a beautiful opportunity for Abigail because she could have taken her her female servants and she could have said, uh, we're out of here.

And she could have left.

But she didn't do that.

She she did not choose uh to do that.

It was it was a wonderful opportunity.

She was saying, you know what, by by tomorrow my husband will be dead, uh uh I will be a widow, I can I can be free to to live my life as I want to, but she didn't take advantage of that opportunity.

Romans 12 17 says, Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.

In 1 Peter 3 9, Peter writes, Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing.

And we see that Abigail certainly did obtain a blessing.

So let's look quickly at what Abigail chose to do.

The first thing we'll notice is that she chose to act quickly and decisively.

Then Abigail made haste, took two hundred loaves and two skins of wine and five sheep already prepared, and five sias of parched grain, and a hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and laid them on donkeys.

And she said to her young men, Go on before me.

Behold, I come after you.

She acted quickly.

She didn't wring her hands.

Oh no, what should I do?

She didn't appear to be overly anxious about it.

She acted quickly and she acted decisively.

In fact, she was a Proverbs 31 woman.

She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.

Secondly, she acted humbly.

When Abigail saw David, she hurried and got down from the donkey and fell before David on her face and bowed to the ground.

She actually inserted herself into the situation and she acted humbly.

She could have gone to David, she could have made accusations, she could have acted like her husband, she could have gone and begged for mercy, but she went and acted humbly.

She bowed on the ground.

Number three, she took the responsibility of the situation on herself.

She fell at his feet and said, Oh, on me alone, my Lord, be the guilt.

Please let your servant speak in your ears and hear the words of your servant.

On me alone be the guilt.

Let me take responsibility for my husband and his foolishness.

Number four, she interceded for her foolish husband.

Threw up her hands and said, you know, this is really too big for me to deal with, and allowed uh matters to take course, but she didn't.

And then number five, she made a peace offering.

Now let this present that your servant has brought to my Lord be given to the young men who follow my Lord.

She offered up what she felt was adequate payment for his positive actions, his protection of her husband's sheep throughout that summer.

And number six, she appeased the wrath of David.

And David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who sent you this day to meet him.

Blessed be your discretion, and blessed be you who have kept you this day from blood guilt and from working salvation with my own name.

For as surely as the Lord, the God of Israel lives, who hath restrained me from hurting you, unless you had hurried and come to me, truly by morning there had not been left to Nabel so much as one man.

She says, Bless, blessed are you, Abigail, because if you hadn't done what you had done, by the morning tomorrow morning, your whole entire uh family, um, the whole clan would have been wiped out.

The beauty of the story is that in Abigail, we see Jesus.

We see that her action is actually pointed to Jesus.

And in Philippians 2, 1 through 8, Paul writes, so if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from my love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

But each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Have it this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, being founded in human.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the throne.

And so we see in Abigail exactly what Jesus did.

First of all, Jesus acted quickly and decisively.

Um He allowed himself, even though he was God, even though he was the king, he allowed himself to become uh like a man.

He acted humbly, he humbled himself, he took responsibility for the situation, the lostness of man.

He said, I will accept that and take that upon myself, and he interceded for the foolishness of all men.

He made a peace offering of himself, and he appeased the wrath of God.

Abigail, in Abigail, we see the Christophany, we see Jesus Christ.

So you say, well, what does this have to do with me?

I came across this beautiful article, and it was written about this.

It was by Emily Floyd from passionquip.com.

And she writes this peacemaking often involves stepping into the chaos of our own lives, intense conversation, miscommunication, and relational strains, and choosing to respond with urgency, humility, and wisdom.

While your personal stressors may not be as fatal as Abigail's or as simple as sibling squabbles, the willingness to confront division rather than avoid it is where the peacemaking happens.

It is pursuing reconciliation even when it is uncomfortable.

It's bringing glimpses of heavenly peace into our everyday lives.

So whether you're guiding a toddler through their tent meltdown in the morning, or navigating hard conversations with co workers, family, and friends, we can either shrink back in passivity.

Or step forward as peacemakers.

And we when we take that bold step, we reflect the heart of God.

The world doesn't need more bystanders, perfectly curated responses, or carefully avoided tension.

It needs more men and women who, like Abigail, are willing to move toward the hard things.

May you step into your chaos today, not as a conflict manager, but as a peacemaker, creating peace for heaven to break through one small bulb.

Aditum.

But when you intercede in your classroom for a student who is going through a hard time, when you cuddle your child because they're having a milk in them, when you avoid conflict with a neighbor, when you defend a co-worker who seems to be ganged up on, when you do all those little things in line, you are being like Christ.

You are making peace.

You have options, you could run, you could get out of the situation, you could feel sorry for yourself, you could do all of those things that Abigail could have done, or you could insert yourself in the situation, intercede, make peace, and point to Jesus.

That's what Abigail did.

So, in whatever situation you're in, whatever hardship you're facing, whatever circumstance you have, follow Jesus and Abigail and be a peacemaker, be a woman or man of peace.