Life is going to have its hardships and its troubles.  It just is.  But there are things we can do to add to our troubles and difficulties in life.  There are places where we hang out, where trouble is more likely to find us.

One of the most well-known stories of the Bible is a cautionary tale about what can happen in those places.  It is found in 2 Samuel 11 and it starts out like this (emphasis added by me):

¹In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him…. But David remained at Jerusalem.

² It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.”

What comes of this is that David finds out her name is Bathsheba.  She is the wife of one of his best and most faithful soldiers who is currently away fighting David’s battles for him.  David sends men to her house and has her brought to him.  He has sex with her (adultery, betrayal, and almost certainly rape) and then sends her away.  A short time later he receives a message from Bathsheba telling him that she is pregnant.

Long story short, David has Bathsheba’s husband murdered in order to cover up what he has done and other really good men die in the process.

Hopefully none of us fully relate to this story in a “been there” sort of a way, but it is a cautionary tale for all of us in how we can invite trouble into our lives.

Notice the choices David made to put himself in a situation where trouble and moral failure were more likely to happen.  When he should have been out leading his men in battle, he stayed home.  He wasn’t where he needed to be and he wasn’t busy doing what he needed to be doing.

I love the phrase “It happened” here.  It’s like saying this incredible series moral failures just “happened.”  But it didn’t just happen at any random time and place in David’s life.  He was not where he needed to be and he wasn’t doing what he needed to be doing.  He was sloughing around on the couch until late in the afternoon while other men did his work for him.  This is far from the image of a great and noble king – or even a grownup for that matter.

David, like you and me, would have faced trouble and temptation no matter what he did, but there are situations we can put ourselves into that make it far easier for trouble to find us.

I hope your stories are less dramatic than David’s, but where is it that trouble is most likely to find you?

It is a gift to ourselves and to all those whom our choices will affect to avoid those places and situations.

May all our lives be blessed by the message of this cautionary tale.