Early in the pandemic, I was scared. I still am. But back then, I was “wipe down my groceries and immediately Lysol my clothes after coming back from Walmart” scared. That was early in the lockdown. I had a new baby and was confronted with the reality that this virus seemed designed to take someone like me, cursed with asthma since my teenage years, out for good. I was vulnerable. My son, who was born into all this, was vulnerable.

I remember being overwhelmed by the fear of dying and leaving my wife and son. I remember praying to God in every way I knew how. And in the midst of that frenetic religiosity, a sort of spiritual test cramming right before the teacher says to close your books, I read Ps. 91:1-7. There’s a lot there, but of course the bit I honed in on was that God would save me from the deadly pestilence and that it would not “come near me” (v. 7). I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one who had suddenly found my new favorite psalm.

But in my more lucid moments, I began to notice that faithful people were getting COVID. Many who were much better Christians, much better people, than I. Some even died. I wish I could say with all honesty that my seminary training had kicked in before this, but it hadn’t. It took the harsh reality of missionaries dying for me to realize I was misusing this prayer, and that I needed to step back from it.

There’s another connection to pestilence and plague in Scripture. There, David, the great and conflicted king of Israel, calls for a census. And God doesn’t care for it. Which is odd. Other times, taking a census hasn’t been a problem, but this time God “burned” because of it (2 Sam. 24:1). Why? The likely reason is not the act itself, but David’s motivation. David wants to know how strong his military is. He wants to know what he’s working with. Maybe David is planning for expansion or invasion, maybe he has a score he wants to settle, or maybe he just wants to know if he’s safe.

Whatever it is, the motivation does not please God. And in a weird turn of events from earlier in the story (2 Sam. 12), David repents for his sin and foolishness before a prophet shows up (v. 10). He’s a slow learner, this David, but he is a learner.

But this is where the story gets weird. The prophet Gad shows up with a word from the Lord. David has three choices: three months of famine, three months of military siege by a foreign enemy, or three days of plague in the land. He chooses plague. His reasoning? Better to fall into the hands of the Lord than the hands of men.

So, the plague comes. 70,000 people die. And in a very strange and cruel twist, someone has to count them and tell David.

But David already knows it’s bad. He is no distant observer. The text tells us he could see the angel of the Lord striking people down from his back porch. And it’s then that he prays again. Only this time he doesn’t pray for forgiveness; he prays that this death ripping through his people would fall on him and not on anyone else.

And it stops.

Then Gad shows up again to tell David to build an altar where the plague stopped. David buys the land, builds an altar, makes a sacrifice, and prays to the Lord. It is here that the grand temple of Solomon would be built.

It’s such a strange story. And it raises so many questions. Does God send plagues? Is God sending plagues?

The questions about God are perhaps the most troubling. But we have to step back and realize the mindset here of those who would write such stories. In their minds, God is sovereign. Thus, anything that happens is because of God. There are no secondary causes. God sends plagues. God heals disease. Period. This is the kind of mindset that Jesus will confront later (John 9:1-3). It’s the kind of mindset with which I had praying Ps. 91. The Bible is an ongoing conversation about the nature of God and reality. And sometimes we get it wrong. Maybe most times.

However, my current understanding of God will not allow me to believe that God sent COVID among us. But I do believe that God is sovereign in that God will ultimately have God’s way. In the mess of a fallen world, things like COVID happen, and there is a mystery as to why.

I ultimately got COVID. I was vaccinated. One of the “lucky” breakthrough cases. The odds, they say, were astronomical. But there I was. Wondering what I had done wrong. The answer: nothing.

Well, maybe not nothing. Sin is funny that way. We can’t really see the extent to which we are cooperating with evil. And we all are. Our actions are one thing, and our motivations are another entirely. We, like David, can sin even when counting our blessings. We, like David, can be so focused on our little kingdoms that we treat people as a means to an end, and not to as an end in themselves. And we, like David, can realize when we’ve gone too far down the road of self-obsession and turn back.

David said it was better to fall into the hands of God than men. On that point, he was certainly right. For the great dis-ease among us and in us may not be the pestilence itself, but the way we react to, ignore, and weaponize the suffering of others.

The truth is, I don’t really know what to do with this story. But what I see in it is the one thing that I know I need right now. The plague ends when David loses self-interest and is willing to sacrifice himself for his people. His prayer changes. He is no longer worried about himself, but others. And something about that releases pestilence-stopping power into the universe.

So, did God give me COVID? No, I don’t think so. But I do think God is asking me what I’m going to do with it.

Will I see the suffering from my back porch as David did and find the resources within me to act unselfishly and generously? Or will I turn back into my personal palace and continue to live as if I am the most important person in the world?

Here’s the thing: the plague in David’s case ended two days early because of his change of heart. To be clear, that was the only thing that changed. But that shifted everything.

In our case, it’s no great feat of observation to say that we have missed several opportunities to be better people through all this. But it’s never too late to pray different prayers. To care. To give. To admit you were wrong.

David did. We can. Let us pray.