David and the Giant

There was once a boy called David who looked after sheep.

Not important sheep. Not famous sheep. Just his family's sheep, on a hillside, in the sun.

He was the youngest of eight brothers, which meant he got the smallest bed, the last turn, and the job nobody else wanted.

But David didn't mind. He sang to the sheep. He counted them at night. And when a lion came prowling once, he stood up — this small boy — and chased it away.

Nobody saw him do it. He just did it, because the sheep needed him to.

Remember that bit. It matters later.

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One day David's father sent him to the valley where his big brothers were, with bread and cheese in a bag.

And when David got there, he found everybody sitting very still and looking very worried.

Because on the other side of the valley was a soldier called Goliath. And Goliath was enormous.

He was so tall that his shadow reached halfway across the valley. Every morning he shouted at the army, and every morning the whole army looked at their sandals and said nothing at all.

David looked around at all the grown men. And then he said the bravest sentence in this whole story:

“I'll go.”

Everybody laughed. Of course they did. He was a shepherd boy with grass on his knees.

His biggest brother said, “Go home, David.”

But David said, quietly: “I looked after the sheep when the lion came. I can look after us now.”

They tried to put armour on him — a great heavy helmet and a coat of iron that came down past his knees.

David took two steps, went clank, and nearly fell over.

“No thank you,” he said, and took it all off. “I can't be brave dressed as somebody else.”

So he walked down to the stream and chose five smooth stones — plink, plink, plink — and put them in his shepherd's pouch.

And he walked out into the middle of that enormous valley with a sling in his hand and absolutely nothing else.

The giant looked down at him and laughed a laugh like a rockslide.

And David — this is the true thing, and it is very hard to do — did not run.

He stood in that big empty valley with his small heart going bump, bump, bump, and he swung his sling round and round and round —

whum… whum… whum…

— and he let one small smooth stone go.

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And the giant fell.

One stone. One shepherd boy. One valley that had been frightened for forty days, suddenly not frightened at all.

They lifted David up on their shoulders and carried him through the camp, and every single person who had laughed at him that morning was cheering by lunchtime.

But here's the part I love best.

David didn't become brave that day.

He was already brave, up on the hillside, when nobody was watching and the lion came and the sheep needed him.

The valley just gave everyone else a chance to notice.