Man after God's own heart...

Day 114

OT Reading: 2 Samuel 10-12

NT Reading: Luke 19:29-48

David is one of the most well known and well respected characters in all of Scripture. In fact, David is called, "A man after God's own heart" (ref. 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22). But based on today's reading it may be hard to understand why. Let's recap:

* At the time when King's went to war, David stayed home.

* David not only saw a woman bathing on her house (which was not uncommon), and decided to summon her to his palace in the middle of the night and sleep with her.

* The woman (Bathsheba) becomes pregnant, so David tries to hide the action by summoning her husband (Uriah) home from the war. He hopes Uriah will sleep with his wife and no one will know any different.

* The plan backfires as Uriah will not go home. So the next night, David gets him drunk (I had forgotten about this part). Still, Uriah will not go home.

* To cover over the issue, David essentially has Uriah killed as he's put in the location of the fiercest fighting.

* David then takes Bathsheba for his wife.

With all that in mind, I have a few observations:

1. Being someone after God's own heart, means less about getting it all right and more about genuine repentance when you've done wrong.

2. God doesn't write me off just because of some bonehead decisions I've made.

3. God can take a bad situation and leverage it for good.* What you may or may not have caught is that from David's marriage with Bathsheba, Solomon is born. Solomon will be known as the wisest man to ever live and continue the line through which God will bring about his promised Messiah.

So yes, David really messed up BIG and yet God used him in a mighty way. With that in mind...there may just be hope for the rest of us :-).