Worship in the Pain

David noticed that his attendants were whispering among themselves, and he realized the child was dead. “Is the child dead?” he asked. “Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.” Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the Lord and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate. 2 Samuel 12:19-20

Friends, this is a hard passage in Scripture. This is a sensitive subject, especially for those who have lost a child. I'm truly sorry if you have experienced that personally. I don't want to make light of any suffering and pray that my words don't cause any harm.

David was in pain because of a consequence of his sin. He was intimate with Bathsheba, got her pregnant and tried to cover it up by bringing her husband home. But then ultimately, he had her husband killed. Nathan came to David and told him that God had taken away his sin and had forgiven him, but one of the consequences was that his newborn son would die. Sometimes our pain is a consequence of our own or someone else's sin. But, other times we are in pain; and that pain is not caused by anything we or someone else did. Either way, we will have pain. Life just hurts sometimes because we live in a fallen world. We can take hope in Jesus' words in John 16:33, "I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

Verse 20 tells us that upon hearing his son had died, David went to the house of the Lord and worshiped. He what??!! I don't know about you, but worshiping God at a time like that seems hard- extremely hard. And it's easy to talk about what we should do in those situations when we're not right in the middle of them. I don't have the "how to's" on worshiping God when you're in a pit of despair, sadness, or pain. But I will say this: keep going to Him- in your grief, in your anger, in your confusion, in your guilt, in whatever you are feeling. Don't allow a difficult situation to cause distance between you and God. Keep going to Him. Cry out to Him. Cling to Him. Our God is good. He doesn't change because of our circumstances. He is always good. Hold onto that and praise Him for who He is.

 For this page, I used water color crayons for the background. I used the following Sweet n Sassy Stamps sets: Fly High, Skinny Caps Alpha, & Rebecca Script. Fly High has a stamp that says "so I can". I used that stamp to stamp "so can I" by masking off the words when inking them so that I could stamp each word in the order I wanted them. I used a similar technique to stamp "pain". I used the "don't be afraid" stamp from Fly High. I masked off the "don't be" and the "a", "f", and part of the "r" & "d" of "afraid" to stamp "PAII". Then I drew in the lines to complete the "N". I hope that makes sense! I often mask of portions of a stamp so that I can make new words or phrases with them. I highlighted the letters with a White Sharpie, and added washi tape.

In Him, Andrea