Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: "Splash" 4-11-13 Deadline (04/04/13)
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TITLE: A Large Splattering of Consequences | Previous Challenge Entry
By Linda Berg
04/11/13 -
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We aren’t told why he stayed home. But as the story is written we see that one single choice of choosing to stay home, instead of honoring his kingly duty, takes on a life all it’s own.
As the story unfolds, David one evening gets up from his bed and walks around on the roof of his palace. He sees a woman bathing. She is beautiful. His pulse quickens and heat rises in his face as he succumbs to her physical beauty with the lust of his eyes and ultimately his heart.
He sends someone to find out about her. The messenger returns with information for King David. She is of high social standing and her husband is Uriah the Hittite, a soldier in David’s army now at war.
Those things should have been a warning. But the man with a history of unrestrained sexual pursuits to satisfy his passions misses it....or refuses it.
He sends messengers to get her. She comes to him and he sleeps with her.
Later, after returning home, she sends word of her pregnancy to King David.
Now David is panicked. His sin will be known. Quickly his mind turns over numerous scenarios as he devises a plan to hide his sin.
He sends for Joab and requests that Joab tell Uriah to return home. Uriah does as he is commanded. David plays concern as he asks questions of Uriah about Joab, the soldiers and status of the war. Then King David makes an offer to Uriah to go to his own home to wash his feet.
David’s scheming plan backfires. Uriah has so much personal integrity that he is unwilling to go home and risk the desire of being with his wife; the Jewish custom forbids sexual intercourse when a soldier is engaged in war.
When David discovers this action of Uriah, he goes into manipulation mode. Before that evening is over, David offers Uriah drink, drinking with him and making him drunk. Again, Uriah does not return home to sleep.
The words aren’t there in the text, but you can see and feel the intensity of desperation David is feeling as he attempts to keep this sin of adultery with Bathsheba hidden.
Another plan is put into action. David blatantly bold writes a letter to be given to Joab concerning the new battle plan of attack. He sends it via Uriah’s own hand to Joab. The message, “Put Uriah at the front line where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.”
Uriah is killed in battle. His wife mourns for him. David takes her as his wife. She bears David a son.
But the thing David did displeased the Lord.
About a year later the Lord sends Nathan to David. Nathan tells David a story. “There were two men, one rich and one poor. The rich man had abundant cattle and sheep but the poor man had only one little ewe. A traveler came to visit the rich man. The rich man, not wanting to use one of his own sheep, took the little ewe to feed to his guest.”
Red color creeping into his face and raising his fists in anger, David says, “Who did this, he deserves to die.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”
I can see David begin to physically withdraw and crumble as Nathan firmly states all that God had done for David. Nathan finished his verbal pummeling with these words, “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his sight?’
David got it!
Nathan tells David the consequences that he will suffer as the result of his sin, regardless of God’s forgiveness.
And so it is that the life of King David, once director of his and others lives, continues the rest of his life at the mercy of events: consequence of his sin.
His baby son gets sick and dies. His son rapes his daughter. His son murders a son. An insurrection and civil war breaks out lead by his son. The same son who imitates David’s lack of control leads Israel away from God.
A small splash of sin…a large splattering of consequences.
NIV 2 Samuel 11:15, 2 Samuel 12:7, 2 Samuel 12:9
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Excellent writing!