Week of Sabbath, Day Five, Morning Devotion

Prayer for hope and healing:

Merciful God,
I know that you are present for me, but sometimes I feel distant from you. Help me to feel the immediacy of your love, and to reflect that love back to all of the people I meet today.
Amen

Reading: Psalm 51: God’s mercy and our renewal

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

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.

Meditation:

When I was a kid, we used to collect pop bottles and turn them in for the redemption value. As I recall, even back then it was a nickel a bottle. We’d get enough money for our own pop, and some kind of snack (Snickers, anyone?). It was a very clean transaction, except for those sticky, dirty bottles.

This psalm operates on the notion that we can simply turn our sticky, dirty souls in to God, and God will redeem them and give us new ones. The psalmist actually believes that he can just ask God for forgiveness of any sin, and God will grant it, straight off.

He is correct. God is ever-merciful, and ever-loving. Nothing we can do is unworthy of God’s cleansing love and forgiveness.

--Are you carrying something around that you can turn in to God for your redemption? Hand it over. Then go have a Snickers and celebrate being loved that much.

Prayer of joy:

Loving God,
It is sometimes hard to believe that you are ready to forgive me anything. What about the things I do which seem unforgivable? What about that thing I said yesterday? Can it really be true that you will cleanse us of any sin? You truly are an awesome God.
Amen