Memorial Day

SCRIPTURE:  Then David raised his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, covered in sackcloth, fell on their faces. 1 Chronicles 21:16 AMP

THOUGHT: It’s a day for remembering, and I suggest this is a story worth considering today. On the day the passage above speaks of, 70,000 men of Israel are killed by a plague. The plague is God-made, and you may remember the infamous choice David was required to make after his sin of taking a census of the fighting men of Israel, “I am in deep distress. Let me fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is very great; but do not let me fall into human hands.”

So, he and his nation fall into God’s hands, and 70,000 men die because of David’s sin. That’s a war. Can you imagine the burden David carried for the remainder of his life? That guilt and awareness is what brings him (and his elders with him) to cover themselves in sackcloth and fall on their faces. As he has once before in the Scriptural narrative, he confesses and repents. The king asks that he and his family bear God’s anger rather than the innocent people around him. God “relents” or as the KJV puts it “he repented him of the evil,” and the angel of the Lord re-sheaths his sword. You may remember that David once loses a baby son because of his sin, and despite what he has suffered, he presses forward again into what amounts to a power grab – using his position to assuage his human and carnal self.

The choices we make as leaders matter. War against God brings war to a nation because God is not mocked. Innocent people suffer and die.

I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to see an angel suspended between heaven and earth, a chance to repent even as the war hovers at our shoreline; I don’t know if God will offer a choice of whether we fall into his hands or the hands of humans, I just know we can’t war against God and expect life to go on as it has.

PRAYER: Oh God, I feel the war. The warring against you as author of life. The warring against you as the supreme power above all earthly and other-worldly powers. The warring against you as the major stakeholder of human existence. Help each of us to use whatever power you’ve allowed us as leaders to further your rule, not destroy it. We remember innocent lives lost, and we remember you.