"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being."
~Hebrews 1: 3
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
~John 1: 1-5
Lots of scripture today because I really had to look deep to gain meaning from Psalm 51: 17. Brokenness and contriteness? I guess I didn't quite understand why God would want me to have a broken spirit or a contrite heart. After much meditation and researching, I think I get it.
God wants us to come to him with offerings of confession and true sorrow for our sins. Psalm 51 relates David's suffering and repentance for having an affair with Bathsheba which resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, and then the eventual murder of her husband Uriah the Hittite, to cover up his sin. The Lord didn't want a sacrificial offering other than the true repentance of his wrong doing. David needed to gain forgiveness through the brokenness of his spirit.
How often do we cover up the sins we commit against others? Um... I'd say 90% of the time. When I'm wrong, I don't want to fess up! I'm gonna take a long shot and say that not many people do. But when we don't acknowledge our wrong, we sin against God. Here's the thing though, God knows our sin even when we are reluctant to accept them ourselves. In my first reflection this Lenten Season, I recognized that, "yeah, sometimes I think I haven't sinned." That right there is the sin. God knows the intricacies of my mind, He knows what I've done, even when I fail to acknowledge them.
I come to God today to be cleansed, to recognize the wrongs that I have committed. I'm not saying that I've done awful things or that I deserve to be punished, but I come to God asking Him to make me more aware. I may not have a completely broken spirit, but I ask for forgiveness for not recognizing and for not acknowledging the times when I do sin.
God sent Jesus into the world as His true reflection, His representative on earth. Jesus is one with God. If I didn't believe that God knows me personally, I probably wouldn't think much about my sin. I would think that I could slip through the cracks. But that would be futile. I need to remember that when I am out in the world that I am also a representation of God. When I do something bad, like talk bad about my mother, I'm not doing right by God because He has created her just as He has created me, in his image and likeness. He loves both of us immensely. We were both created from His Word and His Word is in the World which means that we are also Him. We are His representations. It's the simple things really that can make us not representative of God's love. Love your enemy as you would love your neighbor. When you love your enemy, you stand against him in Love and you create justice in the world. And isn't that why God sent Jesus to be among us, to be able to recognize that we are all equal in the eyes of God. When we turn our hearts from Him, we must come back with true sorrow and repentance to cleanse our hearts. God doesn't need us to sacrifice goats, He needs us to recognize our sin and to ask with true contriteness for forgiveness.
AMEN SISTERS AND BROTHERS!
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