Today’s Scripture Reading (January
15, 2013): 2 Samuel 12
I love to
read Frank Herbert’s books. One of the features of his books is that Herbert
understands the idea of cause and effect. There is very little in his books - I
want to say nothing, but that might an overstatement - that does not form a
cause for which an effect is going to have to be dealt with later in the book.
Maybe the best example of this is found in the story of Paul Atriedes in the
Dune Saga of books. In Dune, Paul finds out that he is the promised Messiah of
the Fremen – the Maud’Dib. At the beginning of the saga, this is a good thing,
because the young heir of the House of Atreides is going to have to rally the
support of the desert dwellers who are waiting for their Messiah to come, to go
against the evil powers that had taken over their desert planet. But because
Herbert understood cause and effect, what was a good thing in the early books
becomes the subject of separation and a problem that had to be dealt with in
the later books of the story.
For the
Christian, we too have a Messiah that has been waited for. And in the action of
his coming, there is supposed to be an effect on us. We are supposed to be the
gathering of the transformed ones, the ones who have felt the effect of the
coming of the Messiah. I have to admit that sometimes I question whether or not
that is really us – are we truly transformed by the coming and the presence of
the Messiah in our midst or have we refused him. Either way, there exists a
cause which demands and effect.
David had
been chosen by God. God makes it clear to him that his anointing of David was
to be the cause that was intended to have a certain effect on David’s life. But
it is also clear that David had a choice whether or not he would allow God’s
cause to have an effect on him. And he had decided with his actions that the
answer was no. He would actively rebel against the holy cause of God in his
life. And God comes to David and tells him that that response is in itself a cause
that would have a specified effect. In this case, a sword would come and would not
depart from not just his life, but his house. The effect was not negotiable. It
was also not forgivable. God would forgive David and call him a man after his
own heart – and yet the sword would still persist.
The effect
would continue even until the day that the Messiah would come and interrupt the
things of this earth. The Messiah would be of the house of David. Long after the
kings that had reigned in Israel from David’s house had been subdued, David’s
house would still exist. And on the cross as Jesus died, the descendant of
David and member of the king’s house, the sword would still be present. The
effect from the cause of David as he killed Uriah and took Uriah’s wife as his
own, pierced the side of the Messiah as he surrendered his life. The sword had
never departed the house of David – and the law of cause and effect was still
in place.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm
51
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