Can I Bring Him Back?

But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. 

II Samuel 12:23 

There are times when we sincerely wish we could reverse the irreversible. David had lost a child. As a grieving father, he would have reversed the situation to bring the child back to the land of the living. He was keenly aware he could not. He makes two realistic statements in our text. One, he frames as a question, ‘Can I bring him back again?’ The other he makes as a simple statement of fact, ‘he shall not return to me.’ Having seen death, in various contexts, he understood the permanency of it and how irreversible death is. Against these realistic articulations, David sets other statements which clearly indicate his understanding that death is not the end of life entirely, although it is the end of life as we experience it here. His understanding of death is important for us not because it will destroy us with it’s finality, but because David could accept the reality of it knowing it was not the end. As we will see in future installments, David had clear hope in eternal life, and that hope rested upon the Person and work of Christ. This enabled Him and us to accept present reality.  

Our Good and Wise God, 
we rejoice that You are sovereign over all things. 
We praise You that because of Christ, 
we can face the realities of life and death. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning