Psalm 103:14
In Eden, everything used to be a hallelujah. Ethical! Very staunch! God acknowledged (Gen. 1:1-31). Though brown and grey, even grime used to be a dappled speck of glittering existence. Enormous as the mountains. Majestic love whales. For even the tiniest fleck which clung to the hidden underside of Adam and Eve’s broom used to be cherished and infamous, a treasured reward from God (Prov. 8:26).
Non-public you ever viewed a snow-weighted down valley blanketed in gentle white? When untouched and vivid within the sunlight hours, earlier than any human boot has pressed its mud-blended trace into it? In Eden, grime used to be connected to untouched beauty love this. All vivid gentle. No muddy boot.
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On the opposite hand, when David writes this psalm, he is a lengthy formula from Eden and innocence. His sins are many. He’d been sinned against too. He used to be grime. No longer innocent and colourful, nevertheless what grime had change into. Like every other created goods, grime used to be now twinged by dying. Dingy, the consideration of its minute fleck in Eden used to be long past. Within the fallen world, minute flecks are flicked. No person sees grime, and if one does, he tries to rid his room of it.
For out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return. (Gen. 3:19, ESV)
Dirt used to be as soon as Edenic (out of it you were taken). Now grime indicators dying (to grime you shall return).
After we sin as David had, we wonder about how God remembers us. Will God fail to have in mind the consideration he gave us, or remembering our frailty, will he shun or abandon us?
In Psalm 103, David describes God as one who remembers and who is merciful and gracious (Ps. 103:4, 8). God is slow to madden and abounding with steadfast luxuriate in, the form of luxuriate in no one can steal from us (Ps. 103:4, 8, 11, 17).
As one who remembers, God banishes condemnation after we repent. Glimpse to any horizon in any path, and all a sinner will explore is the brilliant gentle of the forgiveness of God (Ps. 103:11-12).
For God is love essentially the most compassionate father (Ps. 103:13). Unhurried to madden, merciful, gracious, abounding with luxuriate in, this Father is delighted when remembering the consideration of the one he loves. This form of Father would by no formula give a scorpion or snake to one dearly cherished who needs an egg or bread (Luke 11:11-13). On the contrary, this form of compassionate Father would exercise his valorous strength to gently brace, fiercely protect, and sacrificially guard the prone minute one he loves. As a compassionate father who is staunch, God remembers our physique. He remembers that we’re grime.
At any time when I’ve been with of us as they preserve their minute or grown formative years in their formative years’s closing moments on this earth, compassionate and loving of us cradle them, talking phrases of lifelong luxuriate in. They have in mind their cherished one’s physique. They yowl, in Jesus, declaring the existence of a luxuriate in that by some skill overcomes even this dying of deaths.
By faith, they know that it is not the Grim Reaper who comes for his or her cherished one. It is a ways the God who created and remembers their minute one who comes.
It is a ways not dying a success in those closing breaths nevertheless dying taking its closing stand.
Have in mind, in this world, it is not dying that is steadfast nevertheless divine luxuriate in.
This divine luxuriate in, mentioned four times in this psalm, remembers not most productive that we’re grime in dying, nevertheless also that it used to be with grime he had given us existence.
He knows our physique. He remembers.
So when ash is smeared on our foreheads on the present time, we confront a tough truth. Loss of life as grime is a scene in our yarn that we can’t spoil out. Sorrows for sins against us. Repentance for our maintain contribution.
And yet, in Christ Jesus, dying as grime has by no formula been and can by no formula be the truest factor about us. Loss of life has an enemy. His title is Jesus Christ.
After we receive ashes on our heads on the present time, we convey by faith that dying will die. On account of dying could not preserve Jesus within the grave, grime will upward thrust all all over again, recovered to the glory given it in Eden and all the more within the unique kingdom that awaits us.
That is why when the earliest followers of Jesus belief of dying, they convey it their closing enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). They realized to explore this enemy outflanked at every flip by God’s steadfast luxuriate in in Christ Jesus, from which nothing, not even dying, can separate us (Rom. 8:38-39).
Our God is our wide rememberer. He remembers our frames, that we’re grime. Held by him, we hope.
Zack Eswine (Red. PhD) serves as lead pastor of Riverside Chruch in Missouri. His books encompass The Unpleasant Pastor and Wiser with Jesus. He writes at The Ethical Sad (thegooddark.substack.com) and is cofounder of Account Christianity with his indispensable other, Jessica.
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