Then David said to all his officials who were with him in Jerusalem, "Come! We must flee, or none of us will escape from Absalom. We must leave immediately, or he will move quickly to overtake us and bring ruin upon us and put the city to the sword." 2 Samuel 15:14

Once again, Absalom began to sow seeds of discord among the people, and David realized it was time to flee for his life. The Bible said that the hearts of the people had turned toward Absalom.

King David, mighty man of valor and accomplishment, reduced to flee from his own son. It certainly gives new meaning to the term "dysfunctional." How sad was that! Couldn't he just muster enough of an army to go and defeat his son? Evidently he couldn't or wouldn't. So he fled.

It would be easy to make two opposite conclusions here: 1) David knew when his reign was over, and 2) why didn't he just go out and defeat the man who was his own flesh and blood? Could that have been so difficult? Absolutely!

So David fled with all of his servants. With a massive entourage of servants and helpers, it wasn't exactly like he could hide wherever he was going. Throughout his entire reign up to this point, it was as if David was pursuing the love of those who were supposed to be closest to him, his children. Now the object of David's love was chasing him or would soon do so.

We are much too much like David. We go chasing after things and people and peace but don't find it until we relent and allow God to pursue us. And in reality it was God who had been chasing us all along, looking for ways to draw us closer while we kept searching "in all the wrong places." Francis Thompson wrote a poem about the "Hound of Heaven," always pursuing, always wooing. Without His constant Draw or Tug or Pull on our lives, I wouldn't be writing this and you wouldn't be reading this.

Below is the beginning of Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven

"I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him."