Today's Daily Lesson comes from 2 Samuel chapter 24 verses 10 through 14:
10 But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people. David said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.” 11 When David rose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying, 12 “Go and say to David: Thus says the Lord: Three things I offer[e] you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you.” 13 So Gad came to David and told him; he asked him, “Shall three[f] years of famine come to you on your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days’ pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to the one who sent me.” 14 Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into human hands.”
15 So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time; and seventy thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba. 16 But when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented concerning the evil, and said to the angel who was bringing destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.” The angel of the Lord was then by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 17 When David saw the angel who was destroying the people, he said to the Lord, “I alone have sinned, and I alone have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father’s house.”
As we continue to read through the Bible, this morning we are given a story about a pestilence linked to a census. An interesting story given that we as a country are now in the midst of both census and pestilence.
The LORD sends the plague because David, the leader of the nation, is fearful and anxious and consumed by whatever the numbers of the census will tell him. He trusts not in the LORD, but in numbers.
So the pestilence is sent and almost a tenth of the nation is left dead before its end.
But the story is not all one of judgement. It is also one of grace and humility. The angel of death is kept from striking the city of Jerusalem. Its people are spared, including David himself. David is grateful, but chastened. He does obeisance to the LORD and then decides that the spared City should be the site for a new Temple. Thus the vision for the first Temple is born and David himself, humbled, comes down from the throne to make the first offering on the threshing floor of the new altar.
As we are in the midst of this pandemic, my prayer is that our leaders, so consumed by economic numbers, might take to heart the number of those lost to this virus -- already greater than the number lost to Israel's census pestilence -- and that they might humbly bow down and ask forgiveness, guidance, and direction. And, I pray, this pestilence might, like ancient Israel's, be the source of a new Temple, a new center of humble spiritual life and offering for all our people.
Lord, hear our prayers.
NOTE: We are reading the Bible through this year. Tomorrow's Lesson comes from Psalms 108-110.
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