Deliverance by the Sword

Frederik's Church, Frederiksstaden, Copenhagen 

"Do not fear.”
"Trust God.”
"Have faith.” 

I have heard these words so many times, and I have believed them. I still do.

And yet, there have been moments in my life when fear did not ask for my permission. It did not wait for my faith to rise. It came suddenly, almost violently, often settling into my body before I could steady my thoughts, before I could even form a prayer.

My heart would race. My chest would tighten. Something inside me would brace, followed by unbearable pain, mixed with shame and guilt. A poisonous mix in itself. Shame is a powerful stronghold, and guilt is, I would say, a stranglehold. After those moments, a question would rise quietly, almost painfully.

Where was God in that moment? Or was it because I had no faith?

Because no matter how much I believed, my body did not seem to listen. It took time, and it took fear. All those moments when terror rose from real, cornered experiences, when evil felt tangible and the sword seemed to hang above my head, were not wasted.

But how does anybody in those situations, trust something, or someone, they hardly know?

So began the desperate quest to discover the person of God. And, of course, deliverance is for the desperate. My terror, my instinctive fear, began to find a place in the reality of who He is.

Somehow it all seemed to unravel into a quiet, living awareness that I could finally lean into, even in the face of real danger, even when the sword was no longer imagined, but genuine.

And yet, I found language for this reality in the most unexpected story, tucked deep in the book of 1 Kings.

When the Sword Is Raised (1 Kings 3:16-28)

“Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.”

The words seemed to fall into the room and remain suspended there, heavy and unreal, as though time itself had slowed to a crawl.

For a moment nothing moved.

The silence that followed crashed through her head so violently it felt as though her ears might burst. A scream rose somewhere deep inside her chest, but it never reached her lips. It hovered there, trapped between disbelief and terror.

Surely, she had misunderstood.

This had to be a nightmare. Perhaps she would wake up in a moment and the scene would dissolve, like a dream that fades when morning comes. But the room remained stubbornly real.

The polished floor of the palace gleamed beneath the light, and the tall pillars rose around her with the quiet authority of power. She remembered noticing the opulence when she had first walked in. It had seemed overwhelming then. The grandeur, the weight of the place, the sense that this was where justice lived.

Had that really been only an hour ago?

Across the room stood the other woman, the one who had shared the same house with her. They had lived under the same roof, two women surviving on the margins of society, their lives brushing against one another in the small space they called home.

Had she really asked for the child to be cut in two?

The thought made the back of her neck grow cold. A thin film of sweat spread across her skin as the weight of the moment settled over her. She knew what everyone in that room believed about her.

She was a prostitute.
Her baby was illegitimate.

No father stood beside her to defend him. No family came forward to claim either of them. Stigma clung to her like a smell that could not be washed away. Lives like theirs rarely carried much weight in the world. They were tolerated when convenient and forgotten when they were not. And yet somewhere in the distance of her mind fragments of scripture flickered.

…the Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a shield for those who have no defender. How He hears the cries of the widow, the orphan, the fatherless. How He delivers His people and does not forsake those who call on His name……

She did not fit into any of those categories. Strange how thoughts appear in moments like this; little scenes playing in the mind like fragile dioramas. But the questions pressing against her heart were harder to silence.

Because this moment was not only about the child. It was also about her.

That morning, she had been a mother. Now she stood accused as a thief. A liar. A woman who had stolen the only thing in the world that had ever truly been hers.

The fragile permission she felt she had to exist, to belong somewhere, seemed to be cracking apart inside her chest.

Have you ever known pain like that? The kind that makes people’s words blur into the background. When explanations and judgments alike lose their meaning because the ache inside you is louder than either. And yet, they say a mother’s love is stronger than the grave. Perhaps that is why the words tore themselves from her chest before she could stop them.

“Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!”

The words left her like something surrendered. But her eyes remained fixed on the king.

Reflection

There are seasons in life when that courtroom scene begins to feel less like an ancient story and more like something uncomfortably familiar. Not because we stand before a king, and not because a literal sword is raised above us, but because something in that moment touches a place we recognize.

Sometimes life teaches you early that survival requires silence. You learn to endure what cannot be changed. You learn to make yourself smaller, to step back, to keep the peace even when something inside you is quietly breaking.

Outwardly, life continues. But if we are honest, there are moments when the heart begins to wonder.

Where is God when evil triumphs?

Why does it look as though the one who wounds walks away stronger, while the one who endures carries the weight?

In those moments the story of the two women before Solomon takes on a different meaning. Because there is a moment in that story that is almost unbearable.

The sword is raised. And it is raised at the king’s command.

For a brief, terrifying instant, it feels as though justice itself has sided with the wrong voice, as though the king’s command will destroy the very thing the mother came to protect.

Anyone who has lived through deep distress knows that moment. The moment when circumstances seem to contradict everything you believe about God. The moment when it feels as though the sword itself has been lifted by heaven.

I have stood in moments like that.

But something was different this time. I did not want to panic in my pain. The wounds were already deep, and I did not want to add anger or fear or unbelief and allow them to become septic. And then, as I reached the end of myself; desperate, something instinctive happened.

My focus had shifted. But not to the sword. But to the King.

To the good God.
The righteous Judge.
The compassionate Father.
The omnipresent, omniscient God. 

Looking back, it did seem for a moment as though the king had sided with evil. It did seem as though wickedness had been rewarded. But the command was never meant to harm the mother. It was meant to deliver her. To restore her. To call her publicly by the name she feared she had lost forever.

“She is his mother..”

Conclusion

“When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply
till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.”
Psalms 73:16-17 

I find myself remembering Job, covered in sores and stripped of everything, who came to the conclusion that he did not have to question God. His deliverance did not come from changing his circumstances, but from seeing God’s character and authority. In that quiet surrender, amidst terror and loss, he found clarity fear alone could never provide. Like the mother before King Solomon, like the moments when my own body betrayed my faith, Job shows that true deliverance comes at the end of ourselves when instinct and awareness align with the King.

Deliverance begins there.

When fear strips away illusions of control, something clearer comes into focus, not our circumstances, but the character of God. Sometimes it is in that moment, when instinct turns our eyes toward the King, that the story begins to change. Because the sword we feared was never the end of the story.

“Declare what is to be, present it— let them take counsel together. Who foretold this long ago, who declared it from the distant past? Was it not I, the Lord? And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Saviour; there is none but me. “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.”

Isaiah 45:21-22

Evil does not get to have the final word.

The answer and the end of the story, is the identity declared by the King. She is the mother. Mother. Not prostitute. Not liar. Not thief. Declared. Unshakable.

An identity defined by who the King says she is.