remember

Opening Prayer: Remember, O Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.  Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me, for you are good, O Lord. (Psalm 25:6-7)

Scripture: Psalm 25:6-7

Journal: How do you see yourself, according to your sins or according to his love?  How do you think God sees you?  Why?  What is the difference?  What effect does it have on your life?

Reflection: In the end, how will we be remembered?  How will we be remembered by our families?  How will we be remembered by our friends?  How will we be remembered by our world?  And, most importantly, how will we be remembered by our God?

     That is what makes the words of this ancient prayer so wonderful.  Even King David dealt with these questions, and prayed about them.  We are all such a mixed bag; our lives a crazy combination of good and bad, beauty and ugliness, successes and failures.  My guess is, if you are anything like me, that when you think back on your life, it is far easier to remember the disasters than it is the glories.  They are somehow firmly etched in our hearts and minds.

    The beauty of this Psalm is that it reminds us that God does not see us in that way.  He does not remember us according to our sins and rebellious ways, but according to his love.  He sees us the way he dreamt us to be.  He sees the beauty, not the tragedy.  He sees our wholeness (in him), not our brokenness.  He sees our righteousness (in Christ), not our sin.  That’s how he could say that David was “a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14), rather than an adulterer and a murderer.  In fact, the name David even means beloved in Hebrew, which tells us exactly how God really saw him.

    Just imagine what could happen if we began to see ourselves in the same way?

Prayer

Closing Prayer:  Lord God, help me to see myself as you see me; not tainted and stained beyond cure by my own sin, but beautiful and perfect and whole in the righteousness of Christ.  Amen.