Today's Meditation
Read Psalm 51
1Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
2Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
4Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
5Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
6You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
10Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
11Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
13Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
14Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
15O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
16For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
17The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
18Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,
19then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
This psalm is often referred to as David's personal Psalm of Atonement after Nathan came to him and pointed out his sin of adultery with Bathsheba which then resulted in the killing of Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. David's sins were many and he had a lot to ask in forgiveness of God.
This psalm also served in later Jewish worship and in Christian Worship as a corporate psalm of prayer to the Almighty God who forgives our most grievous sins. That need to ask God for forgiveness continues and we have a lot of forgiveness to ask of God when it comes to sin - both personal and corporate.
On this day, June 19th, 1865 (155 years ago) - two and a half years after President Lincoln gave his Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves in Galveston, Texas finally heard that they had been freed. It was the last hold out of slavery in the US, a national sin that we still have much to atone for; generations of ingrained racism that have affected our African American brothers and sisters. This day has been celebrated as a holiday since the 1800's as Juneteenth. You can read more about it in the link.
Allow today's meditation of this psalm be for you a psalm of atonement for your own personal sins and for our corporate sins, as it was for David and for the whole of Israel.
Be Thou My Vision - a piano version of this hymn you've never experienced before.
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