Whom Do You Mourn More?

I can think of no harder tragedy to live thru than that of losing a child. It’s not natural to outlive one’s progeny, yet David did so on several occasions. How did he deal with that loss?

On two different occasions, we see David in the process of mourning the loss of a son. The first time it is in the loss of his infant child with Bathsheba, the second is after his son Absalom is killed.

His infant child dies as a result of David’s own personal sin. He was an innocent cut down at the start of his life. David spends hours praying and fasting for the Lord’s to save the child, still, the child dies. Yet David doesn’t wail, he rather gets up and resumes his normal life.

Yet in the death of Absalom David takes it much harder.

The king was deeply moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept. And thus he said as he walked, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!"

2 Samuel 18:33

David cries shame his people. He doesn’t stop till his army’s commander tells him he is disrespecting those that stood beside the King. You see they had just been fighting against Absalom. This son had rebelled against his father. He had publicly defied and defiled his Father. He attempted to murder him and take his throne.

Yet David seemingly cries more for this rebellious son that his innocent one. Why? Shouldn’t he be more satisfied with the loss of a wicked one than a righteous one? Why cry for the sinner more than the innocent?

A clue to this behavior is David’s reasoning for his seemly odd behavior in the loss of his infant child. He tells his servants in 2^nd Samuel 12:23, "But now he has died; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me." He knows while the child may be gone, he has the hope of being with him again in heaven. But with Absalom, that hope is lost.

David is a lot like God in this. God wants all to be saved (1^st Tim. 2:4) yet he knows that many will perish. God rejoices more over “one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). Maybe that’s because he knows that he will have eternity with faithful but the lost will be gone forever.

I started out by saying that there is no greater tragedy than losing a child. Maybe I should amend that to losing a child forever. That why God is so concerned with the lost. That’s why we should be as well.

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission. It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog