# David: Perfection in Imperfection **Theme:** God chooses the overlooked, forms them in hiding, and keeps His covenant with them through both their courage and their catastrophic failure. --- ## Week 1 — The Hidden Shepherd --- # Day 1: Chosen in the Field ## Reading 1 Samuel 16 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Samuel comes to Bethlehem to anoint a king, and Jesse parades seven sons past him without a single one being chosen. The youngest is out with the sheep and has to be sent for. God tells Samuel that man looks at the outward appearance but the LORD looks at the heart. David is anointed in front of his family, and then goes straight back to the flock. - Samuel nearly picks Eliab on the strength of his appearance alone - David is not invited to the sacrifice; his own father overlooks him - The anointing happens privately, in a house in Bethlehem, with no crowd - He is made king and returns to the sheep — promise and reality separate by years ## Prayer Father, You saw the son nobody bothered to call in from the field. Thank You that You are not impressed by the things that impress me, including about myself. Where I am working in a place nobody is watching, remind me that You are. And give me the patience to go back to the sheep after You have spoken. Amen. --- # Day 2: The Giant and the Name ## Reading 1 Samuel 17 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Goliath taunts Israel every morning and evening for forty days, and the entire army is frozen. David arrives on an errand to bring bread and cheese to his brothers, hears the taunt, and is offended less by the insult to Israel than by the insult to God. Saul's armor does not fit, so he goes with a sling and five stones and tells Goliath the battle belongs to the LORD. - Forty days of taunting before a single Israelite moves - David is on a food delivery, not a military assignment - The sharpest opposition comes from Eliab, his own brother, accusing him of pride - One man fights for a paralyzed nation, and his victory is counted as theirs ## Prayer Lord, I have stood in a field listening to something taunt me for forty days and done nothing about it. Give me a clear enough view of who You are that the size of the problem stops being the point. Keep me from wearing armor that was never made for me. And when the criticism comes from close to home, let it not stop me. Amen. --- # Day 3: The Cost of the Song ## Reading 1 Samuel 18 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Jonathan loves David as his own soul and gives him his robe and sword. Then the women come out singing that Saul has struck down thousands and David tens of thousands, and from that day Saul eyes him with suspicion. Saul throws a spear at him twice, sends him into dangerous battles hoping he dies, and dangles a daughter as bait. David keeps succeeding, and every success sharpens the threat. - The same success that wins Jonathan's loyalty earns Saul's hatred - A song sung by other people, which David did not write or ask for, triggers everything - Saul turns marriage and warfare into instruments of murder - David behaves wisely through all of it and his name grows anyway ## Prayer God, I want to be blessed and I do not want what blessing costs. Teach me to hold success loosely enough that I am not undone when it makes me a target. Guard my heart against the envy Saul let grow in his. And where I cannot control what people say about me, let me keep doing the next right thing. Amen. --- # Day 4: The Friend Who Chose Right ## Reading 1 Samuel 19–20 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Saul's intent stops being hidden. Michal lowers David out a window and lies to her father to buy him time. Jonathan tests Saul at the new moon feast and gets a spear thrown at him for it, learning that his father genuinely means to kill his friend. The two men make a covenant in a field, weep together, and part. - Jonathan sides with David over his own claim to the throne - Michal risks herself and deceives her father to save her husband - Jonathan finds out the truth by nearly being killed for asking the question - The covenant they cut that day is still being honored decades later, to Jonathan's son ## Prayer Father, thank You for the people who chose me at cost to themselves. Make me that kind of friend — the sort who steps between someone and the spear. Where loyalty to You and loyalty to family pull against each other, give me Jonathan's clarity. And let the promises I make outlive the moment I make them. Amen. --- # Day 5: Honest in the Dark ## Reading Psalm 59 ## Overview & Key Takeaways This psalm is set on the night Saul's men surrounded David's house waiting for morning. He does not perform composure. He describes them as dogs prowling and snarling around the city and asks God to see it. In the same psalm, without anything outside changing, he calls God his strength and his fortress and says he will sing of His steadfast love in the morning. - Written from inside the danger rather than remembered safely afterward - He names the threat plainly instead of spiritualizing it - The psalm turns while the house is still surrounded - He schedules worship for a morning he has no guarantee of seeing ## Prayer Lord, I clean up my prayers before I bring them, and You never asked me to. Let me tell You what is actually prowling around outside. Then give me what David had — the ability to call You my fortress before anything has changed. I will sing about it in the morning. Amen. --- # Day 6: The Cave of the Distressed ## Reading 1 Samuel 21–22 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David runs, lies to the priest at Nob to get bread and a sword, and then escapes a foreign king by pretending to be insane, scratching at the gate and letting spit run down his beard. He ends up in the cave of Adullam, where everyone in distress, in debt, or bitter in soul gathers to him — four hundred men. Saul learns of the priest's help and slaughters eighty-five of them. - His fear produces a lie, and the lie gets a town of priests killed - He takes Goliath's sword from behind the ephod; the old trophy becomes the tool - The future king's first army is made of debtors and the discontented - He tells the one surviving priest that he is responsible, and keeps him safe ## Prayer God, I have told small lies to get out of hard corners and not counted the cost to other people. Forgive me. Thank You that You gather the ones in debt and distress and make something of them. Let me be honest about the damage I have done, and let me be a safe place for someone who has nowhere else. Amen. --- # Day 7: Taste and See ## Reading Psalm 34 ## Overview & Key Takeaways The title ties this psalm to the day David escaped by pretending to be mad — not a dignified deliverance. Out of that he writes that he will bless the LORD at all times, that this poor man cried and the LORD heard him, that the angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him. Then he shifts into teaching mode and invites others to learn. - Written out of an escape achieved by drooling in front of a king - He turns immediately to instruction: come, children, and I will teach you - "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted" is written by a man recently in pieces - The gratitude here is a decision made about a memory, not a passing mood ## Prayer Father, some of my rescues have been undignified and I would rather not talk about them. David wrote a song about his. Teach me to bless You at all times, including the times I came out looking foolish. And let what I have survived become something useful to somebody younger. Amen. --- ## Week 2 — The Wilderness Years --- # Day 8: Asking Twice ## Reading 1 Samuel 23 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David hears the Philistines are raiding Keilah and asks God whether to go. God says yes, but his men are afraid, so he asks a second time and gets the same answer. He saves the city — and then God tells him plainly that the men of Keilah will hand him over to Saul if he stays. He leaves for the wilderness, where Jonathan finds him one last time and strengthens his hand in God. - He inquires of God repeatedly rather than acting on his first instinct - He rescues a city that would have betrayed him, knowing his men are unwilling - Doing right buys him no loyalty from the people he does it for - Jonathan makes one final trip to encourage him, then leaves the story for good ## Prayer Lord, teach me to ask twice when the people around me are afraid, instead of bulldozing or backing down. Give me the willingness to help people who will not return the favor. And thank You for the friends who show up in the wilderness only to strengthen my hand in You. Make me that for someone. Amen. --- # Day 9: The Corner of the Robe ## Reading 1 Samuel 24 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Saul goes into the very cave where David and his men are hiding. His men tell him this is the day the LORD promised. David creeps forward and cuts off a corner of Saul's robe, and his conscience strikes him even for that. He lets Saul walk out, then calls after him and holds up the cloth. Saul weeps and admits David is more righteous than he is. - The opportunity is so perfect that his men read it as divine provision - His conscience troubles him over a piece of fabric - He refuses to take the throne by a method that would define how he held it - Saul's tears change nothing; he goes home and resumes the hunt later ## Prayer God, I can make a very good case for taking what You already promised me. Give me a conscience tender enough to be bothered by the small compromise. Keep me from grabbing at the right thing in the wrong way. And when someone's apology does not last, help me not to build my obedience on it. Amen. --- # Day 10: In the Cave ## Reading Psalm 57 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Written in a cave, this psalm says his soul takes refuge in the shadow of God's wings until the destroying storms pass by. He describes men whose teeth are spears and arrows and whose tongues are sharp swords. Then, still in the cave, he says twice that his heart is steadfast, and commands his own harp and lyre to wake up so he can greet the dawn. - Refuge is a place under wings, not a place away from enemies - He names the threat with precision; this is not vague trouble - "My heart is steadfast" is repeated as something he is choosing, not feeling - He orders his own instruments to wake up — worship here is a deliberate act ## Prayer Father, I keep waiting to feel steadfast before I act steadfast. David said it twice in a cave. Give me the will to wake up what has gone quiet in me and use it. Be the shadow I sit under until this passes. Amen. --- # Day 11: The Woman Who Stopped Him ## Reading 1 Samuel 25 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David's men protect Nabal's shepherds, and when David asks for provisions in return, Nabal insults him. David straps on his sword and rides out intending to kill every male in the household. Abigail intercepts him with food and an argument: he does not want this on his conscience when God makes him king. He blesses her for stopping him. Ten days later Nabal dies. - The man who spared Saul twice nearly commits a massacre over an insult - Restraint is not a settled trait; it can fail between two chapters - Abigail's argument is about David's future, not Nabal's behavior - He publicly credits her with keeping him from bloodguilt ## Prayer Lord, I can be patient about the big thing and lose my mind over the small one. Send me the people who will get in the way, and give me the humility to bless them instead of resenting them. Guard my conscience from what I would do in anger. And thank You for every disaster You have quietly prevented. Amen. --- # Day 12: The Spear at His Head ## Reading 1 Samuel 26 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Saul hunts him again, and this time David walks into the camp at night with Abishai while a deep sleep from the LORD lies on all of them. Abishai asks permission to pin Saul to the ground with a single thrust. David refuses again, takes the spear and water jug from beside Saul's head, and calls across the valley to mock Abner for failing to guard the king. Saul admits he has played the fool. - Sparing Saul once could be circumstance; twice makes it character - Abishai offers to do the deed so David's hands stay clean, and David rejects the loophole - He takes the spear that was thrown at him twice, and still does not use it - Saul's confession is fuller this time and leads exactly nowhere ## Prayer God, keep me from the loophole — the version where I get what I want and someone else carries the guilt. Make my restraint something settled rather than something occasional. Where I hold a weapon that was once used against me, help me set it down. Amen. --- # Day 13: Thirst ## Reading Psalm 63 ## Overview & Key Takeaways In a dry and weary land where there is no water, David writes that his soul thirsts for God the way his body thirsts for a drink. He remembers looking on God in the sanctuary, a place he cannot currently reach. He says God's steadfast love is better than life. And he thinks about God on his bed, through the watches of the night. - The metaphor is literal; he is in an actual desert without water - Memory of past worship carries him where present worship is impossible - "Better than life" is written by a man whose life is genuinely at risk - The night watches, when fear is worst, are when he meditates ## Prayer Father, I want to want You like that. Right now I mostly want the situation resolved. Make the thirst real in me, and meet me in the hours when I am awake and afraid. Thank You that Your love is better than the life I am trying so hard to protect. Amen. --- # Day 14: Strengthened Himself ## Reading 1 Samuel 30 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David and his men return to Ziklag and find it burned and every wife and child carried off. They weep until they have no strength left to weep, and then his own men start talking about stoning him. The text says David strengthened himself in the LORD his God. He asks whether to pursue, is told to go, and recovers every single person. - He loses his home, his family, and the loyalty of his men in one day - The grief comes first and goes all the way down before anything else happens - He strengthens himself in God when there is no one left to strengthen him - He rules that the men too exhausted to fight share the spoil equally ## Prayer Lord, there is a kind of loss that takes the people who would normally hold me up. That is where David was. Teach me to strengthen myself in You when there is nobody else. And make me generous with the ones who could not keep up. Amen. --- ## Week 3 — The Rise of the King --- # Day 15: The Song for Saul ## Reading 2 Samuel 1 ## Overview & Key Takeaways An Amalekite arrives claiming he finished Saul off, clearly expecting a reward, and David has him executed for laying a hand on the LORD's anointed. Then David tears his clothes, fasts until evening, and composes a lament for Saul and Jonathan that he orders taught to the people of Judah. He calls Saul mighty and beloved, swift as an eagle. - The man bringing what he thinks is good news has fatally misjudged David - David mourns publicly for the man who hunted him for years - The lament is written to be taught and sung, not merely felt in private - Not one line of it settles a score ## Prayer Father, I keep a ledger, and I would have found something to say about Saul. Take the score-settling out of me. When someone I had every reason to resent is gone, let me grieve them honestly. Give me a heart big enough to sing about my enemy. Amen. --- # Day 16: Finally ## Reading 2 Samuel 5 ## Overview & Key Takeaways All the tribes come to Hebron and David is made king over all Israel at thirty years old — somewhere around fifteen years after Samuel poured oil on his head in his father's house. He takes Jerusalem, a stronghold whose people were so confident they said the blind and lame could hold it against him. The chapter's summary is that he became greater and greater, for the LORD was with him. - Fifteen years or more sit between the anointing and the throne - He is anointed three separate times before the promise is complete - The city he captures was considered so secure its people mocked the attempt - The summary credits God's presence, not David's patience or skill ## Prayer God, fifteen years is longer than I want to wait for anything. Thank You that the delay was not neglect. Where I am somewhere between what You said and what I can see, hold me steady. And when it comes, let me remember who actually did it. Amen. --- # Day 17: He Reached Down ## Reading Psalm 18 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David describes God parting the heavens and coming down, riding on the wings of the wind, thundering, with the earth reeling. Then the point of all that machinery: He reached down from on high and took hold of me and drew me out of many waters. He brought me into a broad place. He rescued me because He delighted in me. - Cosmic imagery — earthquake, smoke, hail — deployed for the rescue of one man - "A broad place" is the exact opposite of the caves and strongholds he lived in - The stated reason for the rescue is delight, not merit or usefulness - David credits God with the strength and skill he spent years developing ## Prayer Lord, I understand rescue as obligation more easily than I understand it as delight. Let that word land on me. Thank You for reaching down and pulling me out. Bring me into open ground, and let me stop crediting myself for what You built. Amen. --- # Day 18: Dancing Before the Ark ## Reading 2 Samuel 6 ## Overview & Key Takeaways The first attempt to bring the ark home ends with Uzzah struck dead for steadying it, and David is both angry and afraid and abandons the effort for three months. The second attempt is done God's way, with sacrifices offered after six steps, and David dances before the LORD with all his might in a linen ephod. His wife despises him from a window, and he tells her he will be more undignified than this. - Sincere intentions with the wrong method end in death; reverence has to be learned - Three months pass between David's anger and his obedience - The king dances in a priest's garment, deliberately stripped of royal dignity - The contempt comes from inside his own house, at his most joyful moment ## Prayer Father, teach me to care how You want to be approached and not only that I meant well. Free me from the dignity I am protecting. Let me worship in a way my own pride would find embarrassing. And when the criticism comes from close in, keep me dancing. Amen. --- # Day 19: The House You Will Not Build ## Reading 2 Samuel 7 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David is troubled that he lives in a house of cedar while the ark sits in a tent, and Nathan tells him to go ahead — then God overrules that same night. David will not build God a house; God will build David a house. The promise runs past his lifetime to a throne established forever. David goes in, sits down before the LORD, and asks who he is that God has brought him this far. - A genuinely good desire is refused, and the answer is larger than the request - Nathan gives the wrong counsel confidently and corrects it the next morning - The covenant is unconditional and reaches roughly a thousand years past David - His response to being told no is worship and astonishment, not argument ## Prayer God, I have plans I am sure You want, and some of them You may simply decline. Give me David's response — to sit down in front of You and be amazed instead of arguing. Thank You that Your no is often a bigger yes I could not have asked for. Build what You intend to build. Amen. --- # Day 20: The Shepherd ## Reading Psalm 23 ## Overview & Key Takeaways A man who kept sheep and then kept a nation writes about being kept himself. There are green pastures and still waters, and there is also the valley of the shadow of death and a table set in the presence of his enemies. The enemies do not leave; the table is set anyway. He ends certain that goodness and mercy will pursue him and that he will dwell in God's house forever. - Written by someone who knows exactly what a shepherd's work costs - "He restores my soul" is the center of it — this is a psalm about being brought back - The valley is walked through rather than around, with the rod and staff for comfort - The enemies are still present at the feast; the safety is not their absence ## Prayer Lord, be my shepherd today in the ordinary sense — lead me, feed me, bring me back when I wander off. I am not asking You to empty the room of everything that threatens me. Just set the table anyway and sit with me at it. Amen. --- ## Week 4 — Failure and Redemption --- # Day 21: The Spring He Stayed Home ## Reading 2 Samuel 11 ## Overview & Key Takeaways In the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, David sends Joab and the army and stays in Jerusalem. He sees a woman bathing, asks who she is, is told plainly that she is Uriah's wife, and sends for her anyway. When she is pregnant he makes three attempts to cover it, and when Uriah's integrity defeats every one, he has him killed by a letter Uriah carries himself. - The collapse begins with idleness during a season when he had work to do - He is told she is married before he sends for her; there is no confusion about it - Uriah's loyalty to his fellow soldiers is what makes the cover-up impossible - The chapter ends with one flat sentence: the thing displeased the LORD ## Prayer Father, guard me in the seasons when I have too little to do and too much freedom. Show me the second look I should not take and the question I should not ask. Keep me from the calculating that turns a sin into a scheme. And thank You that the last sentence of the chapter is not the last sentence of the story. Amen. --- # Day 22: You Are the Man ## Reading 2 Samuel 12 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Nathan tells David a story about a rich man with vast flocks who takes a poor man's one beloved lamb, and David burns with anger and pronounces sentence. Nathan says: you are the man. David does not deflect, argue, or have him removed. He says he has sinned against the LORD. The child dies, and afterward David washes, worships, and eats. - The confrontation works because it lets David pass judgment on himself first - Roughly a year passes between the sin and the reckoning - The confession is immediate and unqualified once he is named - Forgiveness is granted and the consequences still unfold; both are true at once ## Prayer God, send me the Nathans and give me the grace to receive them. Take away the instinct to explain myself, manage the story, or find a reason it was not that bad. When I am named, let me say it plainly. And teach me to get up and worship even inside the consequences. Amen. --- # Day 23: Create in Me ## Reading Psalm 51 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David's prayer after Nathan leaves. He asks for mercy according to God's steadfast love, admits the sin is against God first, and asks not merely for pardon but for a clean heart and a right spirit. He begs God not to take His Holy Spirit from him. He says the sacrifice God actually wants is a broken and contrite heart. - He asks to be washed, not excused - "Against you, you only, have I sinned" names the vertical dimension first - The request goes past forgiveness to reconstruction — create in me a clean heart - He offers to teach transgressors God's ways; the worst thing he did becomes material ## Prayer Lord, do not just forgive me — remake me. I know how to be sorry and stay the same. Create in me a clean heart, and restore the joy I have talked myself out of. And let what I have learned here be useful to someone still in it. Amen. --- # Day 24: The Weight Lifted ## Reading Psalm 32 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David describes what the silence cost him physically — his bones wasted away, his strength dried up like moisture in summer heat. Then he acknowledged his sin and stopped covering it, and God forgave. He calls the forgiven man blessed. He urges others to pray while God may be found, and warns them not to be like a horse or mule that has to be forced with a bit. - The toll of unconfessed sin is described in bodily terms, not just spiritual ones - The turn happens the moment he stops covering it - God's instruction comes with an eye on him, close in rather than at a distance - He writes it down to teach — this is what he does with what he learned ## Prayer Father, I know the wasting feeling of carrying something I will not say out loud. I am done covering it. Thank You that the moment I stop hiding is the moment it lifts. Teach me with Your eye on me rather than a bit in my mouth. Amen. --- ## Week 5 — Consequences and Legacy --- # Day 25: Out the Back of the City ## Reading 2 Samuel 15 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Absalom spends four years at the city gate telling everyone the king has no time for their cases, and steals the hearts of Israel. When word reaches David he leaves Jerusalem on foot rather than fight in the streets, and climbs the Mount of Olives weeping with his head covered. He sends the ark back into the city, saying that if the LORD delights in him He will bring him back — and if not, let Him do what seems good. - The rebellion is assembled slowly, in the open, over four years - David walks away from the capital rather than defend it with blood - He refuses to use the ark as a talisman and sends it home - His prayer holds both outcomes as acceptable before he knows which one is coming ## Prayer God, I want to name the outcome and then call it faith. David went up the hill weeping and left the ending with You. Give me that. Let me hold what I want loosely enough to say honestly that if You do not give it, You are still good. Amen. --- # Day 26: Many Are Saying ## Reading Psalm 3 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Written while fleeing Absalom. He counts his enemies and then quotes what they are saying about him — that there is no salvation for him in God. He answers that God is a shield around him, his glory, and the lifter of his head. Then he offers his evidence: he lay down and slept and woke again, because the LORD sustained him. - The taunt he records is theological, not merely personal — they say God has left him - "Lifter of my head," written by a man who left the city with his head covered - The proof he offers that God is holding him is that he managed to sleep - Composed at the lowest point of his life, with his own son leading the army ## Prayer Lord, when the accusation is that You have given up on me, be the shield and the lifter of my head. I will take sleep as evidence of Your care, because some nights that is all I have. Sustain me through this one. Amen. --- # Day 27: Absalom, My Son ## Reading 2 Samuel 18 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David sends the army out in three divisions and tells all three commanders, in front of everyone, to deal gently with Absalom for his sake. Absalom is caught by his head in an oak, and Joab kills him against direct orders. When the runner arrives with news of a great victory, David's only question is whether the young man is safe. Then he goes up to the chamber over the gate and weeps, wishing he had died in his place. - He gives the order publicly so that nobody can claim not to have heard it - Joab disobeys deliberately, judging the king's grief a smaller risk than mercy - The victory report becomes irrelevant the instant David hears the name - "Would I had died instead of you" is a substitution a father cannot actually make ## Prayer Father, this is the cry of a man who would have traded places with his son and could not. Thank You that You did what David could not. Hold the parents reading this who are watching a child destroy himself. And keep my own children close enough to me that they never have to build a rebellion to be heard. Amen. --- # Day 28: A Life Looked Back On ## Reading 2 Samuel 22 ## Overview & Key Takeaways Near the end, David sings a long song taking in the whole span. He calls God his rock, his fortress, his deliverer, his shield, the horn of his salvation, his stronghold. He recounts being surrounded by the waves of death and being drawn out of many waters. He says God brought him into a broad place and rescued him because He delighted in him. - Sung after the entire story, including the chapters he cannot be proud of - Seven images stacked for one idea: God is where he hides - The rescue is described again as being pulled out and set down in open ground - These lines also appear as Psalm 18; he has been saying this his whole life ## Prayer God, when I look back I see the failures more clearly than the mercies. Let me sing the same song David sang, knowing everything he knew about himself. You were the rock the whole way through. Thank You for delighting in me anyway. Amen. --- # Day 29: The Threshing Floor ## Reading 2 Samuel 24 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David orders a census over Joab's objection, and afterward his own conscience strikes him. Offered a choice of judgments, he chooses to fall into the hands of the LORD rather than of men. Seeing the plague, he asks that it fall on him and his father's house instead of the people, who he says are only sheep. He then insists on paying full price for Araunah's threshing floor, refusing to offer God what costs him nothing. - He fails again late in life, and again it is his own conscience that convicts him - Even Joab, who has done far worse, thinks this is a bad idea - He asks for the judgment to be transferred onto himself - The ground he pays for becomes the site where the temple is later built ## Prayer Lord, keep my conscience alive into old age. Let me never get so used to myself that I stop noticing. Teach me to refuse the offering that costs me nothing. And thank You that the place of judgment became the place of worship. Amen. --- # Day 30: Be Strong ## Reading 1 Kings 2:1–4 ## Overview & Key Takeaways David gives Solomon his final charge: be strong, show yourself a man, keep the charge of the LORD your God, walk in His ways and keep His statutes. He ties the promise of a man never failing to sit on Israel's throne to that faithfulness. A man who failed publicly and repeatedly ends by handing his son the covenant rather than a list of his own achievements. - His last instruction is about character before it is about kingdom - He passes on God's promise, not his own record - The throne promise is restated at the end of a life that nearly forfeited it - The line he hands over runs through Solomon and eventually back to Bethlehem ## Prayer Father, let the last thing I hand my children be the covenant and not a résumé. Make me strong in the way David meant it — faithful, ordinary, walking in Your ways. Where I have failed, let the promise survive me. And carry it on to people I will never meet. Amen.