This summer I’m getting my clinical pastoral education as a chaplain intern at a children’s hospital. While making rounds, I met a young father in the hall. He was pushing a stroller. In the stroller was a beautiful baby girl dressed in "street clothes." On the cancer floor where I work, most of the children wear hospital gowns, so I deduced that this was either a parent that I hadn't met, strolling a sibling, or that this man and child didn't belong on this floor. Taking a chance, I stopped and introduced myself. The man saw the word, "Chaplain" on my I.D. badge, and he didn’t waste any time with social conversation. He asked, "How do you tell a little child that God has made her sick?"

As two years of seminary theology started spinning around in my head, I answered, "All of us have different ways of looking at God, so I can only tell you how I see God and how I might talk to my own child, okay?" (He nodded.) "I would tell my child how much God loves her, and that she is very special to God. That she is God's own lamb. Do you have a child who is a patient here, or are we talking about this precious baby?"

The father replied, "This one. She’s getting tests today. They think it’s serious. I’m scared. I've heard that God does things, like making little children sick, to test us, the people around them, or that God is punishing us for the bad things we have done."

"I've heard that, too," I said, "but I can't square it with how much God loves us. I can't imagine that a loving God would hurt a child just to see how strong we grown-ups are, or make a baby suffer to pay us back for our sins."

"Then, why do you think God lets babies and little children get sick?"

"I think that bad things just happen to good people. I don't see God as a cosmic puppeteer, pulling our strings and making (or letting) bad stuff happen to any of us. I see God as loving us, his creations, and cherishing us as his own, no matter what our condition is. So I would want my child to understand how perfect she is in God's eyes, and in mine, even when she is ill." The encounter ended about as abruptly as it began, with hurried thanks from the young man as he headed down the hall toward the lab.

Needing a break, I went outside to sit by the goldfish pond, and daydreamed my way backward in time, to ancient Jerusalem. I found myself having this same conversation with Bathsheba, whose newborn child was ill. She was asking the same questions of me that the young father had asked. She told me that a prophet named Nathan had come to David, the king. And that Nathan had prophesied that her child would die. "Tell me your story," I said.

She began, "I am, in my heart, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, even though now I am one of David’s wives. David is very powerful. He is everything to his people -- a great soldier, a wise commander, a wonderful king, a spiritual leader chosen by God. Last spring, David stayed at home while his army went to war, and while he was looking out over the rooftops of the city, he saw me bathing. He sent for me, and commanded me to lie down with him. He knew that I was a married woman, but he did not care. What the king wants, the king gets. My choice was to obey him or to die. I wanted to live to see my husband again, so I obeyed. Later, I learned that I was pregnant, and I sent word to him. This child was his, as Uriah had been gone for months. Shortly after that, Uriah was killed in battle, and, after I mourned him properly, the king sent for me and brought me into his household. I have heard rumors from the other wives that David arranged Uriah’s death, and I can believe that. Then the child was born, and now he is sick.

"David says that this is a punishment to him for scorning the Lord – that he acknowledged his sorrow for his sins to Nathan, and Nathan said that God had forgiven David, but that his punishment for scorning the Lord was that this child would die. I don’t understand -- why would God cause death of this innocent baby – my little lamb – to punish David for his scorn? Am I to be punished, too?"

In my daydream, I was aware that I wanted very much to be pastoral to Bathsheba, but I wasn’t sure how to go about it. She and I, you see, are from such different cultures, different times, even though we do worship the same God. The answers that I had given to the young man in the hospital corridor seemed so ... well, so Episcopalian. To buy some time to think, I asked her what else Nathan said. She told me that Nathan reminded David that everything he had – his kingdom, his wives, his victories – God had given to him out of love, and how God would have given David twice as much if David had wanted it. She said that Nathan had told David a story about a rich man who owned flocks of sheep, but who took a poor man’s little pet lamb and slaughtered it to feed a traveler. David had said that he was like the rich man in the story, but Bathsheba told me that she didn’t understand this at all.

"Bathsheba," I said to her. "David was a shepherd once. He would understand a story about sheep. You are the little lamb in the story. David took you from Uriah even though he had all he wanted already. Nathan was telling David the hard truth that he would have to be responsible for his choices, and for his belief that he alone was in charge of his life. God loved David extravagantly, and David ignored, even spurned, God’s love. Because David recognized that he had sinned against God by taking you from Uriah, and by murdering your husband, God forgave him for his sins, but David still would be punished for his contempt for God. God’s punishment is not the death of the baby, but the terrible despair that David will feel as his baby son is dying. God’s punishment on David is that no matter how great he is as a king, his personal and family life will be disastrous. You see, Bathsheba, God loves you and your baby, your lamb. God loves David, just as God loves us all."

Then Bathsheba asked the question I dreaded. "Why, then, do you think God lets babies and little children get sick?"

"Well, I don’t have all the answers, but I think that bad things just happen to good people. I don't see God as a cosmic puppeteer, pulling our strings and making (or letting) bad stuff happen to any of us. I see God as loving us, his creations, and cherishing us as his own, no matter what our condition is. So I want you to understand how perfect your son is in God's eyes, even when he is ill. Remember, Bathsheba, what David sang when he realized that God had forgiven him, for it may help you in the place you’re in at this moment:

". . . let all who are faithful offer prayer to you;

at time of distress, the rush of the mighty waters

shall not reach them.

You are a hiding place for me;

you preserve me from trouble;

you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.

As I spoke those verses from Psalm 32 (the psalm that we read in part today) my daydream began to fade. Somewhere between past and present, I called out the last line of the psalm to her. "Remember, Bathsheba, that ‘. . . steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.’" My heart called out to the man in the hospital corridor, "Remember that steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord." And also to you who receive this message, "Remember: steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord."