May 15

David’s Repentance

            Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.  Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.  Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.  Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.  O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.  The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Psalm 51:10-17

David is a broken man.  Because he could not control his appetites and his actions, his world has fallen apart.  His good friend, Uriah, is dead.  His child by his new wife, Bathsheba, is dead.  What he worked so hard to hide is known to God and His prophets.  Nathan has prophesied that conflict and bloodshed will run through the rest of David’s reign.  And David, described as a man after God’s own heart, has broken faith with his Lord.

He sits down to reflect and to write and to repent and Psalm 51 is what comes out.  It is an acknowledgement of his evil actions.  It is a cry for mercy and a plea to not cast him away.  It is a request to change his heart.  It is bargaining for a second chance where this time he will use his blessings for the good of others instead of his own gain.  It is a recognition that God cannot be bribed back into right relationship.  God sees the heart.  He knows if our repentance is authentic or fake.  He knows if we are broken by the condition of our hearts or if we are just embarrassed that we got caught.

Our sins are not just arbitrary rules that we break with a wink and a nod.  Like David, our sin kills our friendships.  Our sin destroys our children.  Our sin sets our lives on a path of conflict and trauma.  Our sin drives us away from God, our Creator, Savior and Champion.  But we decide that we have more important and pressing things to do than being bogged down in feeling guilty about our sins.  We have jobs and responsibilities and kids who have so many other issues to worry about.  So we sometimes have lust-filled thoughts and actions.  So we sometimes lose our tempers and rage a little bit.  So we sometimes engage in a little bit of gossip and manipulate things in our favor.  Everyone does and we, more than anyone else, need to release some steam sometimes.

Repentance is not approaching God in order to get some bad marks removed from our report card.  Repentance is recognizing that our hearts, the very core of who we are, are broken.  They are filled with pain and fear and that prompts us to sin and that sin pours more pain and fear into the world.  We are part of a vicious circle with the world and the only way to break out of that circle is aligning ourselves with God.  Like David we ask that our inner beings will be transformed…that we will love what God loves and hate what He hates.  We ask that our responses will mirror God’s responses.  We ask to hear His voice louder then all the other sounds of the world.  Right relationship is following in His footsteps as He breaks a path through the deep snow.  Temptation is thinking that a different path might be better.  Sin is heading in that different direction.  Repentance is trudging back through the snow to begin following His path again.

That path that God is blazing?  That is the only way through the snow that leads to life, hope and joy.  The only way.    

A moment to reflect:

Where do you need to repent and return to a right relationship with God?