Daily Lesson for May 7, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is from Psalm 38 verses 17 and 18:

"For I am ready to fall,
and my pain is ever before me.
  I confess my iniquity;
I am sorry for my sin."

Psalm 38 was penned by David as part of what was called a Memorial Offering. Though we do not have the specifics of the occasion, reading the psalm through makes it evident that what is written in Psalm 38 is David's deeply moving remembrance of just how close he came to losing all, including his own life, and the surrender which ultimately led to his salvation.

At the beginning David speaks of God as having inflicted punishment upon him.  The LORD's rebuke is like wounds in his side and a heavy hand pressing him to the floor.  His body too is giving out;  There is "no soundness in my flesh" and "no health in my bones," he says.  Wounds on his body scream with infection, there is a strange burning in his sides. It is a picture of a man whose body bears the scars of a long years of abuse.

Yet, it is the soul that is the sickest.  He says his iniquities have risen above his head, as if his sins have risen up to drown him.  He can no longer keep his head above water.  His sins weigh him down.  He is feeble and feels crushed, and in a phrase that says everything the light has gone from his eyes.  The reader is ready to write him off.

But then comes these words: "I am ready to fall."  It is there, with those words that the psalm takes a turn.  There is release, confession, acknowledgement and the letting to of sin.  The LORD is no longer the enemy weighing down on him, but now his salvation.  Looking back, over however a long of distance it was, David can see that it was at that moment - the moment he was ready to fall - that was in fact his salvation.  When he was ready to lose everything, that was the beginning of everything being redeemed.

"First the fall," Julian of Norwich said, "then the redemption.  But both are the grace of God."

I believe that today more than ever.