6 Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
7 Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!
I know many, many people who are now spending their adult lives trying to live down their misspent youth. Their aim is noble and their hearts are in the right place, but my experience is that in all the ones I can think of there is still something missing. They are moral -- deeply so -- but they are not at peace. There always remains yet one more crusade against human sin to join in order to prove devotion and faithfulness to God. They never quite get there; and neither does anyone else.
We can never really live what we've done down. We can take up a sword to defend Jesus in Gethsemane or a cross to follow him to Golgotha, but in the end all our efforts will fall short. We cannot save ourselves nor our past. It is by grace that we are saved.
Amends have there place. They are important for building back bridges and for bringing about reconciliation. They are also important for showing what the LORD has done. But so long as we are still striving to make it up to God or other people then we're pretty much locked in the prison of the past -- a place we can never get out of ourselves.
Today's Lesson is a good word for those still stuck trying to live down what happened years ago. Our faith is not in ourselves -- that we can ever live anything down, but our faith is in God and the promise that we will be found in His great mercy. In the end this is our great hope and our one plea:
Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!
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