I am 63 years old and I miss my dad and my mum and my brother and there are times, despite our ups and downs, that I have cried out, “I wish I could talk with you”. I have, all of a sudden, found grief overcoming me like a wave. I know that all you godly people will tell me I will be with them in paradise and that I will share eternity with them. Look! It hurts still, sorry for my weakness.

We recall what God said to David following his sin with Bathsheba,

Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbour, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 2 Samuel 12:11

David is having to face the consequences of his actions. It is agonising for David, he is organising an army against his own son. (2 Samuel 18:1-2). Can you imagine the enormity and turmoil of all this? David’s men persuade him not to go, normally he would be in the thick of the battle (vs 3-4). They are protecting him should they lose, and also protecting him from himself should all sorts of feeling and maybe misjudgements arise if it came to the death of his son. Would he react as a king or as a father? This is awful for him.

There is this incredible statement made by David.

And the king ordered Joab and Abishai and Ittai, “Deal gently for my sake with the young man Absalom.” And all the people heard when the king gave orders to all the commanders about Absalom. 2 Samuel 18:5

Despite the wickedness of his son, despite the murder of his brother, despite the power grabbing, despite the treatment of David’s concubines, despite the desire to kill his father, David still wanted to protect his son from harm. Truly this is a man after God’s own heart and an example to follow when folk have hurt us. If imperfect David went to extraordinary lengths to try and protect his son, we must see in him something of the extraordinary lengths God, who is perfect, will go to protect us, his children.

A battle takes place in the forest of Ephraim. It was a dense forest and the surrounding area rough and uneven not the best of places for a battle (vs 6-8). It was full of pits, cliff edges and pools. It was difficult to follow battle protocol and almost impossible to see friend or foe. Absalom is caught somehow in a tree after having been chased away from the battle. The image is awful.

And Absalom happened to meet the servants of David. Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak, and his head caught fast in the oak, and he was suspended between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on. 2 Samuel 18:9

His plight is reported to Joab (vs 10). The messenger would not kill Absalom and so disobey the king’s orders, (vs 11-13) but Joab was a hardened general and had no such scruples. He saw Absalom as a threat to the king and the nation. So, Joab and his men go to find Absalom hanging in the tree.

Joab said, “I will not waste time like this with you.” And he took three javelins in his hand and thrust them into the heart of Absalom while he was still alive in the oak. And ten young men, Joab’s armour-bearers, surrounded Absalom and struck him and killed him.2 Samuel 18:14-15

The ferocity and the anger is plain to see. Joab punished Absalom. He took out his anger on him, this was pay-back time, revenge. This was not from the heart of David or God. Paul said this to the church in Galatia,

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Galatians 6:1

Absalom wanted a kingship but Joab made sure he was remembered for his wickedness, so sad.

And they took Absalom and threw him into a great pit in the forest and raised over him a very great heap of stones. And all Israel fled every one to his own home. Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up for himself the pillar that is in the King’s Valley, for he said, “I have no son to keep my name in remembrance.” He called the pillar after his own name, and it is called Absalom’s monument to this day.2 Samuel 18:17-18

David does not yet know about the death of his son but agony is about to greet him. It’s going to be so deeply personal and hard. David will be told his son is dead, we will look at his response next time. What must it be like to lose a son? Maybe thinking you should be the one to die first. It must be something akin to amputation, when the amputation heals, the limb is still gone.

The hurt of grief I guess can differ. There is the pain of the severing, and then the relentless pain of the premature gone-ness. The countless might-have-beens, and what was meant to have been. Those will hurt badly.

What will David do, how will he react? One might think that the only way would be for David to cry less or get over the ache quickly. That might show that his confidence was in God and the good that he does.

It might, and some people are wired emotionally to experience God that way. I have to admit I am not wired that way. At every moment of the lengthening grief, we turn to him, not away from him thereby the length of it is a way of showing him to be ever present and enduringly sufficient for everything.

David let me speak to you (this is weird). Everyone is different. Beware of blaming yourself or others, for you and others will move into or out of grief at different paces and in varying ways. It is so personal and what you may find is that the one who seemed to recover more quickly will weep the more deeply in ten years. You just don’t know now, and it is important not to judge. One day David, the Son of God will lose his own cousin John in similar circumstances and even he experienced the intensity of grief.

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. Matthew 14:13

Because of that and many other situations, including his own horrific death we are able to say together.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15

We are never alone with our grief.