I wonder if it struck Saul at that moment, as he found himself sitting in the dirt, exasperated look on his face, holding the hem of Samuel’s torn robe in his clutched fist:

“Has it really come to this?”

And it had. Time after time, Saul had chosen disobedience. Sure, sometimes he’d gone halfway toward doing what God had told him, but he really wasn’t a “follow-through” kind of guy. Now it had finally caught up to him.

Samuel had delivered the crushing blow that God had rejected Saul as the king of Israel. The prophet had turned to leave, and the king had groveled after him, clutching at his robe so fiercely that a piece had torn off in his hand (1 Samuel 15).

But neither Samuel, or the Lord for that matter, was willing to be moved. Saul had broken the law. He had sinned. And despite his pleading, Samuel responded: “The Lord has torn the kingship of Israel away from you today and has given it to your neighbor who is better than you. Furthermore, the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change His mind, for He is not man who changes His mind” (1 Samuel 15:28-29).

When we read these words, isn’t there part of us that starts to get nervous? How many times have we been Saul in this story? How many times have we knowingly sinned against God? Broken His law? Forsaken His fellowship? And how many times have we crawled in the dirt?

In those moments, isn’t there a piece of us that thinks we’re going to get the same response that Saul got? “Not this time. The second chances are all used up. And God is not going to change His mind.”

When Saul grabbed the hem of the prophet’s robe, most scholars think that tore off was the symbolic tassel that represented the law, something that went with the prophet everywhere. Ironically, the tassel tore off in Saul’s hand – a souvenir to remind him of his disobedience.

But that won’t happen to us. The robe is not going to tear in our grip. It’s not because we haven’t done worse than Saul; it’s because Jesus has kept the law perfectly in our place. The robe is not going to tear.

Our experience isn’t that of Saul; it’s of the nameless woman in Mark 5 who clung to the robe of Jesus. She wasn’t forsaken; she was healed.

Because of Jesus, the robe isn’t going to tear. We can hang on in faith.