2 Samuel 18:26 · World English Bible
The watchman saw another man running; and the watchman called to the gatekeeper, and said, “Behold, a man running alone!” The king said, “He also brings news.”
The father waits for word of his son, and every runner on the horizon carries the weight of what the news might be. The watchman's straining attention is the posture of a man who cannot act and can only look, reaching toward an outcome already settled somewhere out of sight.
From the Clinical Psychology reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY
The father waits for word of his son, and every runner on the horizon carries the weight of what the news might be. The watchman's straining attention is the posture of a man who cannot act and can only look, reaching toward an outcome already settled somewhere out of sight. To love someone is to become vulnerable to news about them you cannot control.
The king reads hope into the second runner, saying he too brings tidings, not yet knowing the tidings will break him. Dread lives in that gap. A man about to receive terrible news often steadies himself with the story he prefers. The hardest thing a father does is wait for what he already half suspects.
Clinical Psychology lens
Who are you quietly bracing for news about, and what would it change if you let yourself admit it?
If you love anything mortal, you have agreed to the possibility of losing it. The love is not a mistake, but it comes with that price written in.
The first arrow is the news itself. The second is everything we add while waiting for it, and that one we fire at ourselves.
Sit still in the churn and let things complete their own motion. Grasping at what has not yet arrived only exhausts the one who grasps.
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Clinical Psychology