High Baggage Fees

1 Samuel 10:22
So they inquired further of the Lord, “Has the man come here yet?” And the Lord said, “Yes, he has hidden himself among the baggage.”

In case you haven’t noticed, airlines charge for almost any baggage now. They charge for the first checked luggage, then the second, now some may even charge for the carry-on. Won’t be long now and they’ll say that both of our arms are carry-ons and they’ll charge for that, too. I guess then we really would be paying an arm and a leg, huh? At any rate, the point here is that baggage has always come with a fee, even long before the airlines tried to capitalize on it. In fact, Saul almost paid the most expensive baggage fee in history.

A little background on our passage may help set the stage for the verse above. By the time we get to this point, Israel has decided that God needs some help with his country and has asked for a king, Saul has been anointed as that first king, and his coronation ceremony is in full swing. Samuel has just gotten up in front of the crowd and has introduced King Saul to his country. As the praise team hit the highest point of musical energy, Samuel proclaimed, “Ladies and Gentlemen! Here’s…your…King…SAUL!!!!” The spotlights probably went crazy, darting in and out and around the crowd, before finally coming to rest on the entrance where Saul should have been standing and taking in all the applause. Everything was perfect, except for the fact that Saul wasn’t there.

Naturally, this raised a few questions. Most noticeably, “Where’s the king??” And that is where our verse picks up the story. The people asked God if Saul had even shown up yet, and the Lord’s response was that the freshly anointed king – the man who stood head and shoulders above anyone else in the nation – had indeed come, but was now cowering in the baggage.

We could get into all kinds of discussions about whether or not it was the perfect will of God for Israel to even have a king (umm, it wasn’t), but let’s at least admit that Saul was most definitely God’s choice to be the first one. In fact, 1 Samuel 10:1 said that Saul had been anointed over the Lord’s own inheritance! That is a high calling, and yet even after countless events that could only be explained as God confirming His hand on Saul, the man who would be king is hidden in the baggage, hesitant to take his place in God’s plan.

Now that is a high baggage fee, and if we’re not careful, we’ll pay it, too. Our baggage continually haunts us and taunts us, trying to convince us that we’re not ready for the very place in God’s plan that He has prepared us for (Ephesians 2:10). I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of paying such a high price for carrying my baggage, and instead of looking around for another airline, I think maybe leaving the baggage behind and trusting God on the flight is my best option.

Finally, I’m truly free to move about the country, and I don’t even need Southwest Airlines to take me there. Want to come along?

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