Do you remember last week when we talked about weariness? I had crawled to my morning table before dawn last week, picking up in the Psalms where I had left off when David’s words did what they usually do and gave balm to my battered spirit.

“I am weary with my groaning,” David says in Psalm 6:6, and, while I wasn’t groaning-weary from grief or physical distress, I hustle-weary, so I stayed there for a minute, praying that God’s Word would sit on my spirit like a weighted blanket.

I was digging into that “weary” word, reading last week’s 1 Samuel 30 story, when I came upon another example of another man who was also weary from toil, exertion, and battle endurance, and his hand stuck to the sword. Now, other translations render that word “stuck” as “clung to the sword (ɴᴀsʙ),” “too tired to lift the sword (ɴʟᴛ),” and “exhausted but never let go of the sword” (ᴍsɢ). The Hebrew word that David uses is , and it means to cleave, adhere especially firmly, as if with glue.

The next reference in the word definition pointed to that “wait on the Lᴏʀᴅ” verse in Isaiah 40 and another close-contact word picture. But this one isn’t adhering to something. This time, it’s binding two things together by twisting continually, over and over again. It’s wrapping one thing around another so tightly that it goes where the other does, and it describes the tension of enduring – a tension-tightness that comes when all you really want to do is let go. Quit fighting. Call it a loss.

But when that happens? When that endurance tension gets to that almost-letting-go place? When you’re exhausted and weak and weary and absolutely tapped of strength? Twist yourself more tightly around your Ephesians 6:17 Spirit-sword, and put all of your weight on His Word. And keep fighting another day.

Because God brings victory eventually.