Psalm 51

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. 6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. 7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. 10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. 12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. 13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. 14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 18 In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. 19 Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altar.


Here's the background as what it would be like in today's standards: He skips out on work, spies like a creeper on some married chick who's bathing on her roof, uses his power to beckon her to him for reasons about which she is clueless, sleeps with her behind her husband's back, knocks her up, tries to cover it up by getting her husband to sleep with her (which could never work now, since we have wonderful shows like Maury to create big drama about the DNA testing [David, the DNA test shows that you ARE the father...]), and then has him murdered to finally resolve the situation. Then after all is said and done, some guy WAY below his social class comes up to him and puts what he did wrong right in his face. He probably could have had this guy killed, too.

Soap opera much?

But the given scripture is why David was the man after God's own heart.

David effed it up pretty well. And fortunately, he had a guy like Nathan to come up to him and be like, "Hey moron, do you realize what you did? Remember what you stand for? Remember whose you are?"

David listened to Nathan.

He was humbled.

And he cried out to God.

This scripture was brought back to my attention this weekend as I was (indirectly) helping someone with an issue with which he was dealing in his life. But for me the scripture reminded me once again that even the best of us fall short (Rom 3:23). I like David a lot. He's real and you can tell that he felt passionately strong emotions, which are evident throughout the Psalms. He doesn't sugarcoat things in his conversations with God. When he's frustrated, he lets God know. Or when he's happy. Or thankful.

Or feeling guilty and shamed.

I screw up a lot. Some of them have been "bigger" than others, and I use quotes only because all sins are equal. Yet God still loves. Even when I feel unlovable, when I don't love myself, when I feel dirty and broken, he loves.

The verse that really hit me this time was verse 12: Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

For a while, I really had made my relationship with God a burdensome thing. A responsibility. A requirement. Another item on the LONG to-do list. I had to go to church. I had to go to chapel. I had to do this Bible study.

I'd lost my passion. I'd lost my joy. And I'm finally starting to recapture them.