VII.  HOW A KING GRIEVES “While the child was alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, 'Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me?'” II Samuel 12:22         A basic idea in the Bible, that continues to this day, is that when bad things happen to good people. There is a reason. The theological assumption is that everything is determined by God’s will. This was the thinking of King David.         If you know the story, David has stolen Uriah’s wife by murder, then fathered a child who became ill. It was for this child that he was grieving and praying. He fasted and lay all night on the ground. He would not eat. His grief was so profound that when the child died his friends feared to tell him for fear of what further self-punishment he might attempt.         However, when they told him, David got up from the ground, washed and anointed himself, changed clothes, worshiped the Lord, and ate. It was then that his confused friends asked why he grieved while the child was alive yet stopped when the child died. “Now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”         In the hours and days following the morning of September 11, the nation and most of the world was in grief. We know grief's stages well, but knowing and feeling are quite different.         Not everyone’s grieving is done the same. We don’t go through the stages in the same order. We don’t all appear to even go through all the stages.         Numbness and shock with accompanying disbelief were first reactions for many. This response seems to provide a buffer time for absorbing and processing and adjusting to a terrible reality. When this first shock melts into tears and sadness, we know we are in grief.         Others begin with anger. Anger often masks as depression. Depression is often the result of anger that won’t or can’t be let out. When life throws down something we can’t do anything about, we may become angry. Wanting to strike out at something or someone is not unusual.         There is usually a period of fixing blame, or trying to find a cause for what happened. Almost everyone has developed an explanation of “why” For some reason, having a “why” fits into grieving.         Looking back at King David’s grieving, you can see that his friends had a notion of how he should grieve that was different from his own. Nobody can tell us how to grieve. Much grieving is unbidden, touched off by some simple word or gesture. A flag, a song, an act of kindness, a picture in the paper, some person’s story.         Plenty of people have said that David had it coming. After all, the child who died was from the stolen wife of Uriah. People think that way when they don’t think. Do they really believe in a God that takes the life of a child in order to punish its parent? Do they believe in a God that allows planes to crash against the alabaster walls of our cities, killing thousands of innocents, in order to send a message to a nation? Those who think that way need to read Rabbi Kushner’s book, “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People” He takes blame from God, and so should we.         David himself had some hope that it was in God’s hands to save the child. He did all the right things to alter the divine will. Nothing worked. He’d done his grieving. He somehow managed to keep his faith in God and worshiped the one who did not answer his prayers. He moved on with life. His grieving would not keep him from moving forward.         So we pray. We hear all the explanations and speculations about the why of it all. We try to talk out and think out our mixed feelings; we try to regain balance. We put on our going-out clothes. We eat again. We go to the concert or baseball game. We get outside into the world. We take some time alone and some time to be with others. Our different feelings rise up again in unexpected moments. We have hopes and fears about how the evil we deplore may be put down without creating more evil.         We walk with less certainty about security. We are a bit more aware of our personal mortality and vulnerability. We are drawn toward faith support systems. Feelings of patriotism are restored. Grieving can make us better people. Not always, of course, but it can. For all his faults, David went on to be remembered for “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want... Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” So it can be for us as for the king when we grieve. — Art Morgan, September 11, 2001