Dealing With God and Death: Daily Thoughts from 2 Samuel (2 Samuel 12:15-23)

Several of our presidents have lost children to death. George Washington lost his young step-daughter, Martha’s daughter (she had already lost two of her four children before marrying George) and it caused him great grief. Abraham Lincoln lost his eleven year old son Willie and said, “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die!”

King David goes through the same gut-wrenching experience and how he handles it stuns his servants.

And the LORD afflicted the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and he became sick. David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. And the elders of his house stood beside him, to raise him 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, “Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spoke to him, and he did not listen to us. How then can we say to him the child is dead? He may do himself some harm.” But when David saw that his servants were whispering together, David understood that the child was dead. And David said to his servants, “Is the child dead?” They said, “He is dead.” Then David arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes. And 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 he was alive; but when the child died, you arose and ate food.” He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the LORD will be gracious to me, that 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.” (2 Samuel 12:15-23, ESV)

The depth of David’s spiritual response is evident in the way he handles Nathan’s word from God that his child will die. Whereas before, when God seemed to foil his plans to move the ark to Jerusalem, David was angry with God and afraid of Him, here he pursues God in prayer and fasting, open to the possibility that God, whom he still deems gracious, might relent of the child’s death and restore him. Then, when the child does die he does not become bitter against Yahweh and does not get bitter at himself (“this is all my fault”) but rests in the forgiveness God has given him. He knows he will go to his child when he dies. David believed that his child went to paradise or “the side of Abraham” (Luke 16) and that he too would go there as a saved individual rewarded with eternal life. And there he would see his son again, an indication that he believed his son, though too young to embrace God’s promise in faith and repentance, was also vouchsafed “heaven” just as he was.

When God sends difficult times our way it is never because He is not gracious. He is grace-filled and does nothing but what is good for those who know Him. Even death can be seen as good for the believer or the infant child because it leads to a new level of living outside the body but in the presence of God. David says elsewhere, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).” We are to live life in the presence of God, both here and in death, experiencing the fullness of joy He affords those who know Him.