David takes a census he was not supposed to take. And he gets punished for it.
But God gives him a choice. Three options. And every single one is brutal.
Three years of famine. Three months of being chased down and destroyed by his enemies. Or three days of plague.
There is no good option. He is going to get a consequence. He just gets to pick which one.
And David lands in a place I hope I would land too.
He says I am in a desperate situation. But let me fall into the hands of the Lord, because His mercy is very great. Do not let me fall into human hands.
He picked the option that put him in God's hands.
Not because it would hurt less. Not because it was easier. But because he trusted who God is, even in the middle of consequence.
Read that line again.
His mercy is very great.
That word stopped me.
We talk all the time about how much God loves us. And He does. But David did not say let me fall into His hands because of His love. He said it because of His mercy.
There is something different about mercy.
Love is who God is toward us.
Mercy is what we get when we have messed up and deserved otherwise.
David had messed up. He knew it. He was not pleading innocent. He was not arguing the consequence was unfair. He had already confessed. He was just choosing where to land in the middle of it.
And he chose the God whose mercy he already knew.
I think if we really understood the mercy of God, it would change so much for us.
Because we tend to run when we mess up.
We hide. We avoid Him. We figure He must be done with us. We start trying to fix it ourselves before we come back to Him.
But David ran toward Him. Even in discipline. Even in consequence. Even knowing it was going to cost him something.
Because he knew.
God's mercy is greater than what we deserve.
His mercy holds us when we have earned the opposite.
His mercy is the reason we can still come close, even after we have failed.
I want to know God's mercy the way David did.
Not just His love. His mercy.
Because there will be seasons of consequence in my life. Seasons where I am facing the fallout of choices I should not have made. And in those seasons, the question is not going to be am I loved. The question is going to be where do I land?
And I want to land in the hands of the One whose mercy is very great.