Compassion. Do you have it? I can remember the ‘time’ of Monica and President Clinton. Back then, I was not a political person. I certainly wasn’t the person that I have grown into today. As we age and as we live through our own personal mistakes or we are trapped by mistakes those around us make which do affect our lives. All of these things mold us and shape us and yes, even help to change our thinking.
King David – I remember studying about King David in the scriptures. I basically had always thought he was just this great man of God. I think I pretty much put him up there as this perfect man. Sometimes people either read scripture so quickly that they glide right over the top and miss some pretty important stuff. Often if you are not reading and studying as many are not, you might only think of King David as the boy who killed the giant with a slingshot! Of course, then he just became King right? That was really all I thought for years. When I was saved and seeking a deeper understanding and desiring God and desiring to please God and walk with Him, I read what made most sense to me. I stayed in the New Testament. I learned a lot from the new testament! The old b testament seemed hard and like just a history book. (I never understood why we needed to know history. In school I loathed it and just got by.)
I began a study about King David, a man with a heart after God. That fit in my thought of this perfect boy who became a perfect King. One day I was at the part where King David was watching Bethsheba bathe. (**First this alone should get our attention. She was doing nothing wrong but he was watching someone who he should have immediately turned from.) He liked what he was seeing. Lust took over. He caved to temptation of his flesh. He sent one of his men to go and have her come to see him. WAIT…WAIT, before anyone starts saying, “well, she should have said no, she was married and she shouldn’t have slept with him.” While all that is true, we need to stop and go back into time for a few minutes. We don’t know what all happened as she went to see the King. (Forgive me if I am missing something because I am going off my memory and this was a few years ago and I am now wanting to go back and read it all again.) Think about what we do know. First, David was not simply any man. He was the King! He was a powerful King! We know that most kings don’t take kindly to being told no. We know that kings often just as soon say off with their head someone didn’t do as it pleased them. What IF she had told him no? He would have had to have done something. She would possibly tell her husband once he returned from fighting in battle. That is something King David could not have chanced. What about the men around King David? Like the one who was to go and get her. What if he too knew she walked away from the king? Powerful people men or women often use their power to get their way. Often they don’t have to do or say anything and the power they have, it alone will do the talking for them. So, we have Bethsheba summoned to the palace. They have sex. She becomes pregnant. The King doesn’t want anyone to know it is his child. When her husband comes in from battle the king tries to get him to go spend time with his wife. This way the timing would be so that her husband would believe it was his child. Her husband was a man of great honor and a great leader. He wanted to stay with the men who fought with him. He wasn’t going to return home if they couldn’t. He would stay because they were to go right back out. So, now King David is forced to do something worse. See when we do one thing wrong and don’t confess it and own it then we must continue to try and cover our tracks. More lies. Now he has to have her husband killed in battle. Then, being a great king and all he will simply bring her into the palace and be a hero. So, that is what he did. Now she has the baby and the baby gets sick and dies. King David always repents and always turns back to God. King David was a man who loved God but sometimes his flesh got the best of him.
Why am I going there? President Clinton certainly was not a King David! Both Clinton and even Monica knew what they did was certainly wrong. Monica was a very young woman. Bill Clinton was charming and powerful. Was she forced, I would say certainly not. She was probably nieve. She probably was living a dream. Living a romance novel. The president of the United States of America picked her! Don’t forget, she was young and hadn’t been around to see the truth of this sort of thing. To know that she was but yet just another plaything for this man. She would be kicked to the curb just like all the others. What if Monica hadn’t been smitten by him and had told him no? It is safe to say that her career would have been over either way. I remember thinking back then that she was a little hussy. All her fault. Certainly not this great president (who just happens to be from the state I also am from). I was certainly superficial at that age and liked this president but if you asked me who hurt I would have been like much of our younger generation today. I want to vote to have the first woman or the first black man. No other reason. Clueless on all levels.
Yes, Monica was a more than willing participate. Yes, Monica fell in love probably more with the power the man held than with the man himself. Bill Clinton is more to blame as he had a record for doing this time and time again and he was busted this time. Sadly, she was the nobody. Monica was destroyed by most of the world, at least by the media. Over time those who liked President Clinton would forget about this mess unless it would be brought up again. Sadly Monica would never be looked at any differently in the years that followed. Can you imagine all the whispers behind her back? Then all the mean horrible things things in things in the news and tabloids? Can you imagine just trying to go to a job interview? If hired by a man would he also wonder if he might have a perk or two?
Yes, Monica knows more about shame than most of us can even comprehend.
God can use her voice in a way most of us cannot relate to. We can relate to shame and being made fun of but not on the level that this young woman has survived.
Listen to her for 20 minutes and think about out how God might be using her weather she knows it or two not. Our pasts if embraced and learned from can be used to encourage people within our reach, they can be used for the glory of God.
