Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared. – Psalm 130:1-4
We all fail. We fall short, mess up, and yes, even sin. It doesn’t sound encouraging, or very much like good news, but wait, we’ll get there.
It is easy to get overwhelmed by faults and failures, and to let our focus on them make them seem even larger and more numerous. It is no wonder that we work so hard to ignore and dismiss them. We create cute sayings that make them seem less important. We try to redefine the rules of life so that it appears no one fails. Though we try to make it seem insignificant , somewhere inside, we still feel the weight of it. The good news is, God has a better plan.
The Psalmist recognized his brokenness, and rather than running from it, trying to hide it, or embracing it, he cries out to God to heal it. In an honest moment with the Creator, he declares the weight and pain of sin, “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?”
The temptation is to believe that God sees us the way we see ourselves. We envision God, scorecard and red pen in hand, keeping a record of our failures. The further we go, the longer the list seems to become, until the weight is so great we cannot bear up under it, but God’s thoughts and ways are not our thoughts and ways. Once again, God has a better plan.
I know there are times in my journey when it feels like my choices change God’s thoughts of me. I’ve even bought into the lie that my failures, my sin, create such a separation between us that God probably doesn’t want to even talk with me. Those are precisely the times that I need to remember that all of Scripture declares God’s love, that the lens through which God looks at me is compassion and forgiveness.
With God, there is always forgiveness, there is always healing, there is always hope. Jesus did not come into the world and offer himself, so that we could learn to be at peace with our brokenness. He came to heal that brokenness, forgive our sin, and give us new life. As Jesus’ words in John 10:10 close, he says, “I came that you might have life, and have it abundantly.”
Like the Psalmist, we can see the weight of our brokenness, but we can allow that knowledge to bring us to a place of awe and wonder because, “With you (God) there is forgiveness.” Rather than being crushed by the weight of our failures, we can we can experience the freedom of forgiveness. God did not wait for you to awaken this morning so that you could be reminded of your failures and hide. Instead, heaven was waiting for you to arise in the love of God and be free.
So, today is a good day, to accept God’s perspective, God’s truth, and love in the forgiveness and freedom Jesus gives us. We can release the weight of our own failure, walk in the joy of freedom, and go into the world to offer God’s compassion, forgiveness, and freedom to all who will receive it.
