N JUNE, I nearly cut the tip of my thumb off. I won't go into the gory details, except to say that the incredibly sharp German kitchen implement sliced more than the butternut squash that I was helping to prepare for soup.
The five stitches have since been removed, and six weeks have passed. The unveiling of the band-aid protected area revealed a tender section of flesh, minus a number of nerve endings.
...accidents do happen and they have consequences.
Why do I mention this incident to you? Because accidents do happen and they have consequences. The small numb section of my thumb will probably never let me forget the slightly careless attempt to help prepare lunch, the desperate actions to stop the bleeding, the waiting in the casualty room, the injections and the sewing back together of a small part of me. As long as I am flesh, I am reminded.
The Bible records a serious mistake of a man of God that directly affected nearly half a million people! He will possibly remember that error for eternity. Seventy thousand of his subjects lost their lives. The remaining relatives had to still respect their king, whose action caused the death of their loved ones.
King David was in his sixties when he was motivated by Satan to number Israel and Judah's armies (1 Chronicles 21:1-8). Thirty years of rulership had not yet brought complete peace in the territory of Israel.
Constant threats from nations round about led David to look at the numbers of warriors at his command. Had he somehow forgotten the victory that God had given him over Goliath and the Philistines?
Joab, David's commander in chief, tried to warn him, but he went ahead anyway. The lives of a lot of people were affected. Yet, as 2 Samuel 24:1 shows, God used this event to humble Israel and Judah. He was preparing them for new developments. David's plea to God to stop the death angel from taking more lives led to the purchase of the site where his son Solomon would later build the Temple. In his determination to set Israel on a course of obedience to God, David organized building materials for the temple. He arranged duties of the Levitical priesthood (1 Chronicles 23-26), and sorted out other civil matters (ch 27).People (including God's servants) make mistakes, and sometimes they affect us seriously. But any subjects of the king who held David's errors against him for the rest of their lives missed the point of why God called him "a man after my own heart" (Acts 13:22, quoting Psalm 89) ... the verse concludes, "who will do all My will".
Perhaps our sins are like flesh wounds. They heal after forgiveness, but we don't remove all the damage.
David's mistakes are recorded in the Bible for us. They are blotches on his life, and many people suffered because of his wrong decisions. But his overall character stands, and God will entrust rulership over the nations of Israel to him (Jer 30:9, Ezek 37:24).
To get back to my sliced thumb. I now have a small insensitive area that probably couldn't feel a pin prick. It is a kitchen 'war wound'. I notice it when I tap the space bar of the keyboard because it feels dead. But it doesn't stop me from typing.
Perhaps our sins are like flesh wounds. They heal after forgiveness, but we don't remove all the damage. And none of us have the right to point a finger at others.
Should we not be like the humble sinner praying before God in the Temple, built on the site purchased by King David after he had numbered his army. The sinner, like David, cried out to God for mercy. Standing next to him, the Pharisee only saw splinters in the eye of the sinner. God saw a man who would do His will.
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