Psalm 51

Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me-now let me rejoice.
Don't keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt.
Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Renew a right spirit within me...
Restore to me again the joy of your salvation.
- Psalm 51: 8 - 12

I love the Psalms because a lot of it is uplifting, positive and inspiring. But a lot of it isn't.

A lot of it is gut-wrenching. It's people gnashing with teeth and wrestling with God. Asking. Pleading. Questioning. It's real, totally human stuff. Which makes it totally believable to me.

Psalm 51 is one of those Psalms. Often known as David's "Bathsheba" poem, we catch a glimpse at someone who KNOWS they messed up, big time. (Which David did.) Reading between the lines, I see David weary from his conscience weighing down on him. Asking, no begging, God to forgive him. Or as David puts it much more eloqouently: "Restore to me again the joy of your salvation." (Guess that's why he wrote most of the Psalms and I didn't)

While we may not have made the same errors in judgement as David, we all have made those errors which make us feel like we're a million miles away from God. But the simple truth is that God forgave David, because he truly repented. And He promises to do the same for you and I, no matter how badly we've messed up.