Reflection on Psalm 25:6-20

 

Psalm 25:6-10

6 Remember, O Lord, your compassion and love, 

for they are from everlasting.   

7 Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; 

remember me according to your steadfast love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord.  

8 You are gracious and upright, O Lord; 

therefore you teach sinners in your way.  

9 You lead the lowly in justice 

and teach the lowly your way.  

10 All your paths, O Lord, are steadfast love and faithfulness 

to those who keep your covenant and your testimonies.  

Reflection

Just the other day, in the grocery store of all places, right next to the beans, a transgression from my past, a wrong that I did to a friend, just popped into my head from out of nowhere.  I did not ask this memory to pop into my imagination.  It is not like I asked my brain to replay the top 10 stupidest moments from Jira’s life.  As you might have guessed, they were so great the first time, why not replay them again!  And, why did beans trigger the memory?  I will let you figure out the psychology of that one on your own.

But, the movie playing in my head, a movie where I hurt the feelings of a good friend, projected in my head just as clear as if it just happened yesterday.  In response to the memory of my stupid actions, I slapped myself in the head three times, the same as a father from the old days would slap a misbehaving child in the head.  I was punishing myself.  And, it was at that very moment that a woman came around the corner and saw it all.  She backed up her cart and proceeded to the next aisle.

Oh, the pain of those memories.  The cringe of those sins.  The stupidity that we cannot change.  I knew that continuing to literally beat myself up over this past infraction would do no good.  The friend probably does not even remember it.  But, that is not the point.  I do.  I remember it.  I know how stupid and insensitive that I can be, and I do not like that one bit.

So, I did what I usually do when this happens and I stopped and prayed right there in the grocery store aisle.  I closed my eyes, lifted my head, and asked the Lord to please forgive me and take away my sin, and if possible take away that memory.  As I opened my eyes, I saw the same lady staring at me again.  She immediately backed away, giving up on her apparent bean purchase for the day.

I did not care what she thought.  I needed to do it; just as the writer of Psalm 25 needed to pray: “Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your steadfast love and for the sake of your goodness, O Lord” (Psalm 25:7).

“Lord, please do not look at me like I look at myself.  Forget those past sins that I cannot do anything about and instead look at me with eyes of love,” I prayed as I joined in the Psalmist’s prayer.

I remember another time when a woman watched me try to slap the stupidity out of my head.  She was one of my elementary school teachers, and I was slapping my head because I failed to spell a word correctly.  Everyone else in class was able to spell it.  “Stupid, stupid Jira,” I said to myself.

“You are not stupid,” my teacher said.  Apparently, I had not said it to myself. 

“There is nothing wrong with making mistakes Jira.  That is how we learn.  What is wrong is getting stuck on those mistakes rather than learning from them.”  Then she showed me the right way to spell the word, and gave me a couple of pointers on how not to make the mistake in the future.  That was a good lesson.  But, the better lesson was the one about how “learning” from our mistakes is so much more important than getting “stuck” on our mistake.

“You are gracious and upright, O Lord; therefore you teach sinners in your way. You lead the lowly in justice and teach the lowly your way” (Psalm 25:8-9).

“You teach sinner in your way.” 

I do not know if you need to hear that today, but I do.  There is no doubt that I am a sinner.  There is no doubt that I have made mistakes and have been unloving in my words and actions.  But, what is amazing to me is that, rather than leaving for another aisle, God takes the time to teach me.  Like my teacher who refused to see me as “stupid,” God refuses to see us as purely sinful and people of low pedigree.  Rather, when God looks at us, God sees the possibilities of who we could be.  The Bible says that God teaches the sinners in the right, good, and loving ways of the Lord.  God sees us as someone worth taking the time to instruct, and redeem, and save.  God sees us as someone worth dying for on a cross.

So, I will continue to pray next to the beans, or wherever I am.  That woman can go to another aisle for a while if she feels uncomfortable, because this is important stuff.  Sometimes I need to remember that I am not my mistakes; rather I am my learnings.  And, I bet that sometimes you need to remember that too.  Sometimes, we need to remember that we are children of the one who walks in ways of steadfast love and faithfulness. 

We are children of the most high.  We are siblings of the one who loves us to the end; the one for whom we wait this Advent; Jesus Christ our Lord.