Confessions

Day 115: Psalm 50-55

Psalm 51 is an amazing psalm about repentance and the deep need for God's mercy and forgiveness. Although the story about David having an affair with Bathsheba and then killing her husband Uriah the Hittite to cover it up is quite familiar, his words here in Psalm 51 are not. In this psalm, David confesses his sin to God and pleads for God's forgiveness.

David's state of mind here--his stance towards God--is one that I have felt during my lifetime. I have sinned. I am a sinner, in constant need of God's grace, just like David is here. David asks God to take away his guilt, make him pure, and give him back his joy. I, too, have been in this same place. In anguish over a sin I have committed. Trying desperately to connect with God. Begging for forgiveness. Repenting in my heart and having every intention to change and then doing it again and again and again.

Only after I committed sins that I said I'd never do--you know, those sins that we judge others for and think are worse than others--well, only after committing sins like that did I really know what it was like to feel the wonderful, miraculous grace of Jesus Christ. To be filled with a new spirit and a renewed sense of faith, hope, and calling. God is good, and through our sins, he brings us to a place where we can see his grace--his wonderful, beautiful nature of salvation--at work.

David utters the following words in this chapter, and I leave you with them here:

"Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a Royal spirit within me." 

May God change our hearts and renew our spirits, just like he did with David.