We all make mistakes. Lets admit that right now. I screw up. So do you, friend. We are human, mistakes are part of what define us. Small or large. We offend a coworker with an off-hand comment, we forget to mail the rent check, we back the car over a garden rake, we change a time honored tradition too suddenly at the new job, we loose our temper, we drop the hammer on our toe, we hurt someone we love.
The story tellers who gave us the ancient Hebrew scriptures understood. Humanity was ever flawed. Here's the relevant text:
David is perhaps one of the most real heroes in the Bible. He is brave, generous, and loving. But he is also greedy, selfish, and blind. He screws up. He has an affair with another man's wife and to cover it up he has him killed. And perhaps for awhile he even thought he'd gotten away with it. Whew, God wasn't looking.2 Samuel 12:15-31 (NRSV)
Then Nathan went to his house.
The LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became very ill. David therefore pleaded with God for the child; David fasted, and went in and lay all night on the ground. The elders of his house stood beside him, urging him to rise from the ground; but he would not, nor did he eat food with them. On the seventh day the child died. And the servants of David were afraid to tell him that the child was dead; for they said, “While the child was still alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us; how then can we tell him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.” But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, he perceived that the child was dead; and David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.”
Then David rose from the ground, washed, anointed himself, and changed his clothes. He went into the house of the LORD, and worshiped; he then went to his own house; and when he asked, they set food before him and he ate. Then his servants said to him, “What is this thing that you have done? You fasted and wept for the child while it was alive; but when the child died, you rose and ate food.” He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me, and the child may live.’ But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”
Then David consoled his wife Bathsheba, and went to her, and lay with her; and she bore a son, and he named him Solomon. The LORD loved him, and sent a message by the prophet Nathan; so he named him Jedidiah, because of the LORD.
But the storytellers knew that our mistakes catch up with us. They eat at us. We need consequences, and David finds consequences. Horrible ones, his son pays the price for his father's sins and dies. This isn't a discussion about whether or not that is a just punishment, and that wasn't the point of the story anyway so look beyond it. David mourns, weeps, deprives himself. But when the cost is paid he does not go back to wallowing in grief and self pity. He stands up and goes on with life.
I think of all the New Testament stories where Jesus declares the sins of a bystander forgiven. They do as David does and go on with their lives. They shed their dis-ease, their sin, their sorrow, their guilt and move on. It seems so simple for them, so easy.
Its not often so simple for us, is it? When we make a mistake we hide from it, we hope no one will notice, when they do we deny it. Perhaps we even deny it to ourselves. We convince ourselves we were right and all those other people, they're wrong. Or we allow the guilt to consume us, we wail and gnash our teeth and torture ourselves with our failing. We shame ourselves publicly and loudly. We apologize and make grand speeches. We sit for days, months, even years in the ashes and sack-cloth of our mourning.
We have something to learn from David, and from those that Jesus made clean. We must face our mistakes, and their consequences. But we must not live in them. We must stand up, wash our faces, and move on with our lives. To do less is to reject the gift of grace offered by a loving God. That isn't to say we shouldn't learn from our mistakes. Perhaps the next time we find ourselves in a similar situation we will remember the taste of ash and act differently.
What are you carrying in your heart? What heavy, sharp things nick you and draw blood? Let them go dear ones. Drop the heavy heart-stones where you stand. You can be no help and no comfort while your arms are full of them, while your eyes are blinded by tears. David not only moved on with his own life he allowed, enabled, and helped those around him move on with theirs.
I once was silent when I should have spoken, I once was passive when I should have fought. The consequences were paid by another. But when I found myself again at the same fork in the road I turned away from the easy path and I walked on with life into risk. I spoke up, I took a chance. The old heavy burden was set down at that fork. Like David I rose from my mourning, and self-doubt, and stepped out trusting that "the Lord loved [me]."
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
The Lord turn his face to you and give you peace.
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