Then David confessed to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan replied, “Yes, but the Lord has forgiven you, and you won’t die for this sin. Nevertheless, because you have shown utter contempt for the word of the Lord by doing this, your child will die.” After Nathan returned to his home, the Lord sent a deadly illness to the child of David and Uriah’s wife. David begged God to spare the child. He went without food and lay all night on the bare ground. The elders of his household pleaded with him to get up and eat with them, but he refused. Then on the seventh day the child died. David’s advisers were afraid to tell him. “He wouldn’t listen to reason while the child was ill,” they said. “What drastic thing will he do when we tell him the child is dead?” When David saw them whispering, he realized what had happened. “Is the child dead?” he asked. “Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.” Then David got up from the ground, washed himself, put on lotions, and changed his clothes. He went to the Tabernacle and worshiped the Lord. After that, he returned to the palace and was served food and ate. His advisers were amazed. “We don’t understand you,” they told him. “While the child was still living, you wept and refused to eat. But now that the child is dead, you have stopped your mourning and are eating again.” David replied, “I fasted and wept while the child was alive, for I said, ‘Perhaps the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But why should I fast when he is dead? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him one day, but he cannot return to me.” Then David comforted Bathsheba, his wife, and slept with her. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and David named him Solomon. The Lord loved the child and sent word through Nathan the prophet that they should name him Jedidiah (which means “beloved of the Lord ”), as the Lord had commanded.
2 Samuel 12:13-25
Dear God, after yesterday’s prayer journal to you, I want to spend some time with Solomon. When I said his name to my wife this morning, she quoted the musical Hamilton and said, “Have it all lose it all.” But he never really lost everything. He just let evil take him over and became awful. I want to see if I can trace it and what I can learn from his life.
And so I am starting with his conception and birth. Born from the sin of David taking Bathsheba and killing her husband Uriah, if David had done things the right way then Solomon should never have been here. After I read this story this morning the thought occurred to me that I can see where people start to build a case for predestination. None of this should have happened, but it did and history took a turn.
I like the little detail in this story that David was comforting Bathsheba. We don’t often think about what this woman went through. She was, at best, taken by the king, or, at worst, raped by him. Then she got pregnant. Then her husband was killed. And then she lost the child. What a horrifying and overwhelming 12 months this must have been for her. Did she even want this new life? We just never spend any time thinking about her in this. We just think about David’s sin and his repentance (see Psalm 51).
So Solomon was born from a union that should never have been and an act of comfort for a distraught woman who had lost so much. Do you predestine things, or do you redeem them? I choose to think you redeem them. Knowing Solomon’s origin story also gives me the peace to know that you have made your plans beyond what my own sin affects, both the things I do and the things I fail to do.
I guess one thing I should add is that I am here today by your will. On paper, my parents should not have married. My mother was divorced. Should she have stayed with her first husband (I don’t think so). My dad chose her against his parents’ wishes. And yet here I am. I’m no Solomon, but I certainly owe my life to you. And my own son is here only because of a miscarriage before him. If that pregnancy hadn’t ended early he wouldn’t be here.
Father, help me to honor you today. You knew me before I was born. I am grateful for my knowledge of you and the opportunity to worship you, even as a Gentile. Please forgive me for the things I do and the things I fail to do. Redeem every action I take and bring glory to yourself through me.
In Jesus’s name I pray,
Amen
Emails to God 