Kathmandu

 September 9, 2021

The view of the Himalayas outside my hotel room was breathtaking. They stretched above and beyond the crowded flat roofs festooned with Buddhist prayer flags and laundry hung to dry in the morning breeze. I stood, drinking in the beauty when a pretty young woman stepped lightly from the stairway to the roof adjacent to the hotel, a basket of laundry on one hip. Setting the basket down beside the washtub before her, she looked straight at me and smiled. Suddenly she dropped the sari she was wearing and stood stark naked before me. Today’s reading flashed through my mind, and I quickly turned away. This morning’s Scripture was the story of David and Bathsheba as told in 2 Samuel 11 and 12.

I wonder what was going through David’s mind that spring day when instead of going out to the battlefield with his armies, he stayed behind in Jerusalem, strolling across his palace roof. Was he having a midlife crisis, wondering if his youthful vigor was beginning to fade away? Was he questioning whether he “had what it takes” to be the king and man he needed to be? Was he afraid of his waning strength? A man in such a state is vulnerable, and if that man is a king, used to getting whatever he wanted, that vulnerability is especially dangerous. David was ripe fruit, ready to fall.

A fleeting glance, a second look, a spark of desire; David was a lusty man and didn’t turn away. That desire turned into a plan which gave birth to an act, and that act to an even more destructive reaction—the murder of a good friend and faithful soldier, the death of a baby boy, and the beginning of sorrows and troubles for his family and nation. All this was running through my mind that morning in Nepal.

I am thankful for this story of David’s failure. Remembering David’s cascade of sins three thousand years ago was a bolt of grace from God enabling me to preserve my integrity those years ago. Even today, reading this story once more moves me to pray, “Thank you Lord, for preserving me in that moment years ago in Kathmandu. Guide my steps as through your Word I place a guard over my eyes and heart.”