2 SIDES OF THE COIN
By Harrietta Turner
Mitchell County
We need to consider both.
Isn’t it marvelous how amazingly forgiving our Father God is? When His chosen blessed servant King David, who already had wives, saw the beautiful Bathsheba, the wife of the soldier Uriah, he took her for himself, had her husband killed in battle when she became pregnant as a result, and God confronted him with his sins by the Prophet Nathan … II SAMUEL Chapter 12. David repented and was totally forgiven … however, the newborn son was taken from this earthly life by God … consequences of our sins are not erased.
How do we know King David was totally forgiven? … after David took the widowed Bathsheba (widowed due to his actions) and married and looked after her, their son Solomon who was born after their marriage was chosen by God to be the next King over Israel and the author of some chosen books of the Holy Bible. Almost unbelievable total forgiveness in the extreme.
In fact, King Solomon authored the other side of that coin (the coin of which both sides apply to us all) … explained in the first chapter of Proverbs, where under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he explains that when God repeatedly warns His children patiently over and over but His warnings to stop sinning are repeatedly ignored and disobeyed God will allow very serious and painful results in the life of the unheeding one. And then when that individual cries out to God for mercy God will not heed his cries but will mock and laugh at him.
22 “How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?”
23” Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you.”
24” Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded;”
25 “But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof:”
26 “I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;”
27” When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.”
28” Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me:”
29 “For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord:”
30 “They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.”
31 “Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.”
32 “For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.”
Is this not a very frightening result of ignoring His loving warnings … as His Word says: THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM? And obviously, we had better get this wisdom in the beginning to avoid the terrible consequences of our lives and the lives of others!!!
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Harrietta Turner lives in Spruce Pine. She graduated from Tulane University School of Social Work.
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