24 Proven Lessons from 2 Samuel 2: A Crown One Tribe Wide, a War Called Play, and the Trumpet That Could Have Been Blown Sooner

There is a particular kind of disappointment that arrives dressed as an answer. You asked God for something, and something came, and it is smaller than what you were told to expect. You are grateful and unsettled at the same time, and you cannot tell which of the two is faith.

The lessons from 2 Samuel 2 were written for that exact position. This chapter puts a man in it and keeps him there for years, and then, inside a single afternoon, it shows what happens to people who refuse to wait for anything at all.

By nightfall the cost of that refusal is countable. Somebody writes the number down.

Brief Summary of 2 Samuel 2

2 Samuel 2 opens shortly after Saul’s death. David asks the LORD where to go, is sent to Hebron, and the men of Judah anoint him king over their tribe alone. His first act as king is a message thanking the men of Jabesh-gilead for burying Saul. Meanwhile Abner, Saul’s army commander, installs Saul’s son Ish-bosheth as king over the northern tribes.

The two sides meet at the pool of Gibeon, where Abner proposes a contest between twelve men from each army. All twenty-four die together, a full battle follows, and Abner kills Joab’s brother Asahel during the retreat. Before the day ends Abner asks for the fighting to stop, and Joab blows the trumpet.

Lesson 1: Ask God Even When Nothing Is Standing in Your Way (2 Samuel 2:1)

2 Samuel 2:1: “And it came to pass after this, that David enquired of the LORD, saying, Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?” (KJV)

Saul is dead. The army that hunted David is scattered on Gilboa. Samuel poured oil on David’s head years ago, and every human obstacle between that oil and the throne has just been removed in one battle. David could have moved without asking and no honest person could have called it presumption.

He asks anyway. What the verse records is not a man in confusion looking for a way out, but a man with an open road who still wants to hear from God before he walks it.

Shortly before this, the Bible says of the previous king, “And when Saul enquired of the LORD, the LORD answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets” (1 Samuel 28:6). Saul asked at the end, in desperation. David asks at the beginning, with the road wide open in front of him. God is glad to guide the person whose way is already clear, and asking Him is an act of strength.

Lesson 2: A Yes from God Is Not the Whole Answer (2 Samuel 2:1)

2 Samuel 2:1: “And the LORD said unto him, Go up. And David said, Whither shall I go up? And he said, Unto Hebron.” (KJV)

You have probably done what David could easily have done here. God gives you a green light on the big question, and you take the green light as the whole instruction and start filling in the details yourself. Move to the city, take the job, say yes to the ministry: the permission felt like a map, so you stopped asking.

David gets his yes and immediately asks a second, smaller question. Go up was an answer about whether. It was not an answer about where, and he does not pretend it was. Only after the second question does the name Hebron appear.

God gave both answers, which means both questions were worth asking. James makes the invitation open-ended: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not” (James 1:5). God does not run out of patience partway through your questions.

Where has a genuine yes from God stopped you from asking Him anything further about it?

Lesson 3: Take the People Who Suffered with You into What Comes Next (2 Samuel 2:3)

2 Samuel 2:3: “And his men that were with him did David bring up, every man with his household: and they dwelt in the cities of Hebron.” (KJV)

The men in this verse are the ones who found David in a cave. Scripture describes how they came to him: “every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented” (1 Samuel 22:2). They were with him when he had nothing, and the day his position changed he did not need them in the same way again.

He brings them up. Not the fighters alone, either, but every man with his household, and the text says they settled in the cities. Whatever God gives you next, there are people whose loyalty cost them something while you were still in the cave, and the arrival of better days is precisely when they become easiest to leave behind.

Lesson 4: Serve the Part of the Promise You Have Been Given (2 Samuel 2:4, 11)

2 Samuel 2:4, 11: “And the men of Judah came, and there they anointed David king over the house of Judah… And the time that David was king in Hebron over the house of Judah was seven years and six months.” (KJV)

Read those two verses together and the size of the thing comes into focus. Samuel had anointed David for Israel. What arrives is Judah: one tribe out of twelve, and it stays one tribe out of twelve for seven and a half years before all Israel comes to Hebron (2 Samuel 5:3).

The chapter does not tell us how David felt about that, and it would be dishonest to invent it. What it tells us is what he did. He moved his people in, he governed, and his first recorded act as king of one tribe was a message sent across the Jordan to men he had no authority over at all.

God is not obliged to explain the gap between what He promised and what has arrived. Hebrews 6:12 speaks of those “who through faith and patience inherit the promises,” a description of how waiting is survived rather than a technique for shortening it.

Take up the work of the part you have actually been given. A tribe is not twelve tribes, and it is still a real kingdom with real people in it who need a king today.

Read also: Why Did David Fight Goliath?

Lesson 5: Honour a Kindness Shown to the Man Who Hunted You (2 Samuel 2:5)

2 Samuel 2:5: “Blessed be ye of the LORD, that ye have shewed this kindness unto your lord, even unto Saul, and have buried him.” (KJV)

David has just become a king. The first thing he does with the office is send messengers to thank a town for burying a corpse. A note of thanks to gravediggers on the far side of the Jordan, ahead of any census, any decree, any muster of an army.

And the corpse belonged to the man who had spent years trying to kill him. The men of Jabesh-gilead owed Saul, because Saul’s first act as king had been to rescue their city (1 Samuel 11:1-11), and they had repaid it by travelling all night to recover his body from the wall at Bethshan (1 Samuel 31:11-13). None of that was done for David. Some of it was done for the man who wanted him dead.

He blesses them for it anyway. Notice where his own interests appear in the message: at the very end, in one short clause, after everything else has been said.

There is a kindness someone has shown to a person who hurt you, and you have probably felt something other than gladness about it. God is honoured when good is done, and He is honoured whether or not the person it was done for deserved it.

Lesson 6: Speak of Your Enemy the Way David Spoke of Saul (2 Samuel 2:5, 7)

2 Samuel 2:5, 7: “…unto your lord, even unto Saul… for your master Saul is dead, and also the house of Judah have anointed me king over them.” (KJV)

Words given to people who loved someone you had every reason to hate will show what is actually in you. David is writing to Saul’s most loyal town, and he had a full case he could have made. Saul threw spears at him, hunted him through the wilderness, and slaughtered a village of priests for helping him.

Twice in three verses he calls him theirs: your lord, your master. He names nothing Saul did to him. He also avoids flattery, leaving Saul exactly as he was, while refusing to reduce the man to his worst behaviour in front of the people who buried him. Peter describes the same restraint in Christ, “who, when he was reviled, reviled not again” (1 Peter 2:23).

Give the person who wronged you their name, their title, and their due when you speak of them to others. You will feel the cost of it, and that is exactly why it matters.

Lesson 7: Promise the Repayment You Cannot Make Yet, and Keep It (2 Samuel 2:6)

2 Samuel 2:6: “And now the LORD shew kindness and truth unto you: and I also will requite you this kindness, because ye have done this thing.” (KJV)

Two commitments sit in one sentence. David asks God to repay them, and then adds that he will repay them himself. He is a king over one tribe, and Jabesh-gilead lies across the Jordan in territory another man has just claimed. He has no means of doing anything for these people.

The promise is not decoration. Many years later, when David is king over all Israel, he sends for the bones of Saul and Jonathan from the men of Jabesh-gilead and buries them in their father’s grave (2 Samuel 21:12-14). He waited a long time for the ability, and he did not forget the debt while he waited.

Praying that God will bless someone is not a way of getting out of blessing them yourself. Where you genuinely cannot act, say so and ask God to act, then write it down somewhere you will see it when you can.

Lesson 8: Put Courage into People Who Have Just Buried Someone (2 Samuel 2:7)

2 Samuel 2:7: “Therefore now let your hands be strengthened, and be ye valiant: for your master Saul is dead, and also the house of Judah have anointed me king over them.” (KJV)

Very few of us know what to say to someone who has just buried a person they loved, and most settle for silence or for something softer than the truth.

The one command David gives in this whole chapter is spoken into exactly that moment, and it is a command to take heart. He does not tell them their loss is small or that time will handle it. He states the hard fact in the same breath, plainly: your master Saul is dead.

That combination is rarer than it sounds. Most of us do one or the other. We tell grieving people the truth and leave them standing in it, or we speak comfort by pretending the situation is better than it is. David tells them what has happened and tells them to be strong, and lets the two sentences stand next to each other without either one cancelling the other.

Grief does not need the facts rearranged. It needs someone willing to say them and then say, be strong.

Lesson 9: A Crown Another Man Hands You Belongs to Him (2 Samuel 2:8-9)

2 Samuel 2:8-9: “But Abner the son of Ner, captain of Saul’s host, took Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, and brought him over to Mahanaim; And made him king over Gilead… and over all Israel.” (KJV)

Look at who does the verbs. Abner took, Abner brought, Abner made. Ish-bosheth is the object of every one of them, and in the whole of this chapter he never speaks and never acts. A man becomes king of a nation and the narrative gives him no line.

Set that beside verse 1, where David asks a question and God answers it. Two kingdoms begin in the same chapter, one on an answer from God and one in the hands of a commander, and the text places them next to each other and lets you look.

None of this makes ordinary appointment wrong; God works through elders, employers and elections all the time. Asaph puts the real question in one line: “For promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another” (Psalm 75:6-7).

Ask what your position actually rests on, and whether you could still stand in it if the person who put you there changed their mind tomorrow.

Lesson 10: Announcing More Than You Hold Does Not Make It Yours (2 Samuel 2:9-11)

2 Samuel 2:9-10: “…and over all Israel. Ish-bosheth Saul’s son was forty years old when he began to reign over Israel, and reigned two years. But the house of Judah followed David.” (KJV)

A claim and a holding are two different things, and this chapter puts them one verse apart. The list of territories runs long and finishes on the largest claim available: over all Israel. Then the narrator files a correction in the very next breath. But the house of Judah followed David. The claim said twelve tribes; the ground held eleven at most.

Scripture then reports two numbers without comment. Ish-bosheth reigned two years. David was king in Hebron seven years and six months. The text gives no reason for the gap, and we should not manufacture one. It lets the announcement and the reality sit on the same page.

Announcements are cheap and they are getting cheaper. A title on a profile, a ministry described bigger than it is, a business spoken of in the plural when it is one person and a laptop. The gap between what you say you have and what you actually hold is the space where anxiety lives, because you know the size of it even when nobody else does.

Read also: Top 5 Dangerous Enemies of Spiritual Growth You Need to Know About

Lesson 11: Calling It Play Does Not Change What It Is (2 Samuel 2:14, 17)

2 Samuel 2:14, 17: “And Abner said to Joab, Let the young men now arise, and play before us… And there was a very sore battle that day.” (KJV)

The two armies are sitting on opposite sides of the pool of Gibeon when Abner speaks, and nothing has happened yet. The first word recorded across that water is an invitation to fight, and the word chosen for it is play.

It is the perfect word. Play makes it sound like a contest, something to watch, a way of settling an argument that nobody will answer for afterwards.

Three verses later the narrator writes down what it actually was: a very sore battle. Scripture keeps its own record and uses the accurate word, whatever the men involved called it at the time. By verse 31 the day has cost three hundred and sixty men on one side and twenty on the other.

Proverbs describes the instinct exactly: “So is the man that deceiveth his neighbour, and saith, Am not I in sport?” (Proverbs 26:19). A joke with a blade in it, a comment called banter, a habit described as harmless. The naming is what makes the thing possible.

Say the true word for it out loud, once, in private, and see whether you still want to do it.

Lesson 12: You Do Not Have to Suggest the Fight to Be Guilty of It (2 Samuel 2:14)

2 Samuel 2:14: “And Abner said to Joab, Let the young men now arise, and play before us. And Joab said, Let them arise.” (KJV)

Who is worse in that verse, the man who proposed it or the man who agreed?

Joab’s entire contribution is three words. He asks nothing about what play means, raises no counter-proposal, and takes no time over it. Twenty-four men are dead within moments, and the man who could have stopped it with one sentence had neither thought of it nor organised it. Both commanders watch from the side, because Abner’s word was play before us.

Most of us are Joab far more often than we are Abner. We rarely start the damaging thing. We are in the room, we say let them arise, and afterwards we tell ourselves it was not our idea. Paul warns Timothy about exactly this distance from a sin: “neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure” (1 Timothy 5:22).

Standing where you could have said no and did not is its own position, and the Bible has never treated it as neutral ground.

Lesson 13: The Man Across the Water Is Called Your Fellow (2 Samuel 2:16)

2 Samuel 2:16: “And they caught every one his fellow by the head, and thrust his sword in his fellow’s side; so they fell down together.” (KJV)

What word does Scripture choose for the man you are fighting? Twice in a single verse the KJV calls him a fellow. These are Israelites on both sides of the pool, Benjamin against Judah, and there is not one Philistine anywhere in this chapter. Every death in it is inside the family.

Paul saw the same thing happening in a church and wrote, “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another” (Galatians 5:15). Scripture allows for genuine conflict; Ecclesiastes 3:8 names a time of war, and there are causes worth standing for. What this verse settles is who the person opposite you actually is.

Before your next hard conversation with another believer, say their name to yourself and then say the word fellow after it. It will not resolve the disagreement. It will change how you fight.

Lesson 14: Some Fights Are Settled by Nobody and Paid For by Everybody (2 Samuel 2:15-16)

2 Samuel 2:15-16: “Then there arose and went over by number twelve of Benjamin, which pertained to Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, and twelve of the servants of David… so they fell down together.” (KJV)

Twelve men from each side, chosen to decide the matter so the armies would not have to. Every one of the twenty-four died, at the same moment, by the same method. The contest that was supposed to settle it settled nothing at all, and the very sore battle began immediately afterwards.

Some conflicts are like that, and you can usually tell which ones before you enter them. Nobody will win the argument in the family group chat. Nobody will be declared right in the disagreement that has been running in your church for three years. Both sides will end up worse off, and the matter will still be open on the other side of the damage.

Solomon knew the arithmetic of it: “It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling” (Proverbs 20:3). God has never measured a believer’s honour by whether they held the field.

Lesson 15: A Name Outlives Everyone Who Earned It (2 Samuel 2:16)

2 Samuel 2:16: “…wherefore that place was called Helkath-hazzurim, which is in Gibeon.” (KJV)

You do not get to decide what a day of your life ends up being called.

An afternoon that one man called play left a permanent mark on a map. The field took a new name from what happened on it, and kept that name long after every man who fought there was dead. Hebrew scholars differ over what the name means, offering renderings such as the field of sharp edges or the field of rocks, so it is wise not to lean hard on any one of them.

The naming itself is the point. God allowed the ground to carry the memory of a day that was supposed to be sport, and Paul states the principle behind it plainly: “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).

Things done in a single afternoon settle into places, families and reputations, and they answer to a name afterwards whether or not anybody intended it. That is worth knowing before the afternoon rather than after.

Lesson 16: Your Best Gift Will Not Save You If You Aim It at the Wrong Man (2 Samuel 2:18-19, 23)

2 Samuel 2:18-19, 23: “…and Asahel was as light of foot as a wild roe. And Asahel pursued after Abner; and in going he turned not to the right hand nor to the left from following Abner… and he fell down there, and died.” (KJV)

The narrator introduces Asahel by the one thing that made him remarkable, and it is the last useful thing he ever does with it. His speed is genuine, God-given, and admired enough to be written into Scripture. It carries him within reach of a veteran commander who has been fighting since before Asahel could hold a sword.

The phrase used of his pursuit is worth hearing. Scripture uses that same shape of language elsewhere for undivided obedience to God’s law: “ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left” (Deuteronomy 5:32). Here the undeviating focus is pointed at a man, and it kills him.

Nothing was wrong with the speed. The problem was the direction, and the two are easy to confuse when you are fast and moving. What are you unusually good at, and who or what have you been aiming it at lately?

Lesson 17: Take the Warning Even When You Despise Who It Comes From (2 Samuel 2:21-23)

2 Samuel 2:21-23: “…Turn thee aside to thy right hand or to thy left, and lay thee hold on one of the young men, and take thee his armour… wherefore should I smite thee to the ground? how then should I hold up my face to Joab thy brother? Howbeit he refused to turn aside.” (KJV)

The warning you are most likely to throw away is the one handed to you by somebody you have already written off. Abner does everything a man can do here. He turns around, identifies Asahel by name, offers him an honourable alternative with a prize attached, and then warns him a second time, naming both what will happen and who else will pay for it. The enemy commander spends his own breath trying to keep this young man alive.

Read the words the text uses for Asahel’s response. Verse 21 says he would not turn aside. Verse 23 says he refused. Both words describe a will rather than a limitation, and the verse leaves us no room to soften them into an accident.

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise” (Proverbs 12:15). God has never limited Himself to messengers we approve of, and He has often used the least welcome voice in the room. Weigh the last warning you dismissed on the grounds of who said it.

Lesson 18: Some Pursuits Cost Everything and Move You Nowhere (2 Samuel 2:23)

2 Samuel 2:23: “…and he fell down there, and died in the same place.” (KJV)

You can move at full speed all day and finish exactly where you began. Everything about Asahel says he covered ground: the fast one, the one who ran down a commander, the one who turned neither right nor left. Then the chase ends and Scripture records where he finished, in the same place. The spot where he fell is the spot where he stayed.

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12). A pursuit can feel like enormous forward motion and produce nothing at all, and the feeling of speed is not evidence that you are getting anywhere. Some of what has been costing you most this year has moved you exactly as far as it moved Asahel.

Lesson 19: Name the End Before You Are Standing in It (2 Samuel 2:26)

2 Samuel 2:26: “Shall the sword devour for ever? knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the latter end?” (KJV)

The conflict is one day old and Abner is already describing where it goes. His words are a forecast: bitterness in the latter end. He can see the far side of this from the near side, and he says so out loud on a hillside at sunset.

He was right. The Bible records the forecast landing on him personally: in the next chapter Joab takes Abner aside in the gate of Hebron and kills him “for the blood of Asahel his brother” (2 Samuel 3:27).

The bitterness in the latter end came for the man who named it, which tells you that seeing where a thing is going does not by itself keep you out of it.

Almost nobody looks at the far end of a conflict while it is still small, because at the beginning it feels manageable and the end feels theoretical. Sit down and describe, in plain sentences, where this thing goes if it runs another two years.

Lesson 20: The Fight Ends the Moment Someone Decides to End It (2 Samuel 2:27-28)

2 Samuel 2:27-28: “…As God liveth, unless thou hadst spoken, surely then in the morning the people had gone up every one from following his brother. So Joab blew a trumpet, and all the people stood still.” (KJV)

Joab says something extraordinary here and it is easy to read past. Without Abner’s words, he would have kept pursuing all night and into the morning. He is not describing a situation that had escaped his control; he is describing his own intention, and he states it under oath.

Then he blows a trumpet and the entire thing stops. One blast, and the pursuit is over, the fighting is over, and the men stand still. That trumpet was hanging at his side the whole afternoon.

“The beginning of strife is as when one letteth out water: therefore leave off contention, before it be meddled with” (Proverbs 17:14). Almost every ongoing conflict a Christian is carrying has a trumpet in it somewhere: a message that could be sent, a sentence that could be said, a claim that could be dropped. Find yours and blow it this week.

Read also: 50 Comprehensive Bible Quiz on 2 Samuel Chapter 1-24

Lesson 21: The One You Lost Is Never Just Part of a Total (2 Samuel 2:30)

2 Samuel 2:30: “…and when he had gathered all the people together, there lacked of David’s servants nineteen men and Asahel.” (KJV)

You would have written twenty. Joab counts the dead, and Scripture writes the count down in a way it did not have to: nineteen men and Asahel. Twenty would have been accurate. The Bible refuses the round number and names him separately, in a verse whose whole business is arithmetic.

Everywhere else in the chapter the losses are totals: twenty-four, three hundred and threescore. Here, for one man, the record breaks its own pattern.

The same care runs all through the Psalms, where David writes, “thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?” (Psalm 56:8). A God who keeps that kind of record does not deal in round numbers.

Anyone who has felt like a line item in something larger, a statistic inside someone else’s decision, a name absorbed into a total, should sit with the way this verse was written. God has never rounded a single person off.

Lesson 22: The Cost of the Fight Comes Home to Your Own Town (2 Samuel 2:32)

2 Samuel 2:32: “And they took up Asahel, and buried him in the sepulchre of his father, which was in Bethlehem.” (KJV)

You can win the day and still carry the loss home with you. David’s side won at Gibeon by every measure the chapter offers, and the burial party still walks the body of Joab’s brother to Bethlehem, which is David’s own town (1 Samuel 16:1; 17:12). The ground that produced the king now receives the cost of the king’s war.

Conflict has a way of ending up in the room next to yours. The argument you took up on principle, the position you defended because you were right, the fight you did not start: the bill for it tends to arrive at your own address, in the form of a relationship, a Sunday, a child who watched the whole thing. Solomon says as much: “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind” (Proverbs 11:29).

Where is a conflict you are currently winning already costing something at home?

Lesson 23: See People as Brothers Before the Damage, Not After (2 Samuel 2:14, 26)

2 Samuel 2:14, 26: “…Let the young men now arise, and play before us… how long shall it be then, ere thou bid the people return from following their brethren?” (KJV)

Abner uses two different words for the same men on the same day. In the morning, proposing the contest, they are the young men, a phrase that turns soldiers into pieces on a board. By evening, calling for it to stop, they are their brethren.

The text reports the sequence and offers no explanation for it. What sits between those two words is a field full of bodies, a dead young man, and a defeat, and the second word arrives only after all three. Scripture does not tell us what changed in Abner, and we should not fill that in for him.

We are quite capable of the same two vocabularies. People are a side, a camp, a comment section, a wing of the church, right up until something breaks, and then, once the damage is done, they are brothers again. What if you used the second word first? Whose name have you been keeping in a category rather than a relationship?

Lesson 24: Being on the Right Side Does Not Make You a Right Man (2 Samuel 2:8, 14, 26, 28)

2 Samuel 2:8, 26: “But Abner the son of Ner, captain of Saul’s host, took Ish-bosheth the son of Saul… Then Abner called to Joab, and said, Shall the sword devour for ever?” (KJV)

Hold the two commanders side by side and the chapter stops being simple. Abner is on the wrong side of God’s purpose: he installs a rival to the man God anointed. Abner also speaks the wisest sentence in the entire chapter and is the one who asks for the killing to stop.

Joab serves God’s anointed king. Joab also gives the proposal his consent, then keeps pursuing until somebody on the other side asks him to stop. He is on the right side, and his conduct that day will not bear much inspection.

Being aligned with what is true does not automatically make your conduct true, and being wrong about something important does not empty a person of every good instinct. That cuts in both directions, and it is uncomfortable in both.

The people you have written off may still be right about the thing they are telling you, and being on the correct side of an issue has never once excused how you treated the person on the other side of it.

Key Themes in 2 Samuel 2

• Guidance sought and given. A man with a clear road still asks God, and asks twice.
• A promise honoured in part. The crown arrives one tribe wide and stays that way for seven and a half years.
• Honour paid where nothing is owed. David’s first act as king is gratitude to a town he does not rule.
• Words that hide what they are doing. Play, young men, brethren: the same men, three names, one day.
• A fight that could have ended sooner. One question and one trumpet were available from the start.

Frequently Asked Questions About 2 Samuel 2

Related Articles to Read Next

• 26 Proven Lessons from 1 Samuel 16
• The Book of 2 Samuel Summary by Chapter (1-24)
• 20 Inspiring Lessons from the Story of David and Goliath
• Why Was King David So Special to God?
• How Did King David Die?

Conclusion: Lessons from 2 Samuel 2

The chapter ends with both armies walking through the night. Abner’s men cross the Jordan and reach Mahanaim; Joab’s men carry a body to Bethlehem and come into Hebron at daybreak. Two exhausted columns moving in opposite directions, and nothing gained that either side did not have that morning.

Set that against the first verse, where a man asks a question and gets an answer in two words. The whole chapter fits in the distance between those two pictures: a crown one tribe wide, served anyway; the word play covering the dead; the warnings refused; the trumpet that worked the first time it was blown.

You are somewhere on that road tonight, either asking or already running. If there is a trumpet in your hand, blow it before morning. If there is a question you have not yet asked God, ask it before you go up.