David was the heroic youth who slayed the giant, the anointed man whose music drove out demons, the warrior with the most loyal and mighty men with him. David had a hundred testimonies and his life was the stuff of legends. David was the celebrated King. God himself testified about David and orchestrated history around the Davidic bloodline.

Even David fell far from the will of God when he took Bathsheba from Uriah and murdered him. This was one of the most despicable, premeditated, cruel crimes in the bible. When Nathan the prophet confronted David about his secret sin, a mortified David, immediately, admitted “I have sinned against the Lord”. It was God who brought David to power. It was God who trusted David to be a King over God’s own people. Ultimately, it was God who put away David’s sin. (2 Samuel 12:13, 14)

Then the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s widow bore to David, so that he was very sick…and he died.

What price did a God of love pay as he struck an innocent child? How did God find solace as the child wasted away breath by breath under the glare of HIS might and holiness? What was going on in the trinity as that dying suffering child became the clearest shadow of Christ himself? When you think on these questions, it becomes clear that it was God who paid the highest price in this tragedy.

David became the shadow of the fallen man, a shadow of ALL OF US, deserving death. The brief life of the child became a shadow of the messiah who was born to die for our sins. Then Jedidiah was born. Jedidiah is the Hebrew word for beloved of God. David named Jedidiah -Solomon, which means peaceable because David, the once fallen man, finally had peace with God.

Only God can turn a great tragedy into a promise of deliverance and peace AND also pay the required price. It doesn’t matter how heroically or humbly your story began or if you wrote  a truly terrible chapter in your story just like David did. The only thing that matters is your willingness to allow God’s grace to work out through Christ, the birthing of all the promises upon your life.