He pleads to hear
God’s joy and gladness,
the rejoining of broken
bones, hiding his face,
blotting out iniquities,
creation of a clean heart,
renewing a right spirit
within, returning home
from exile and
abandonment, restoring
to joy, upholding him
willingly, delivering
him from judgment,
a tongue to sing
of righteousness,
opening his lips
to praise.
Photograph by Buse Doga Ay via Unsplash. Used with permission.
Why dies he ask
for a clean heart
to be created within?
Because the friend,
the prophet, had
confronted the sin.
He was a man known
for being after God’s
own heart, and here
he is, asking for
a clean heart. He lays
out the process:
a request for mercy,
a blotting out of sins,
a cleansing, knowledge
of what he’d done,
purging with hyssop,
washing to cleanness.
Photograph by Fabrizio Conti via Unsplash. Used with permission.
Some Friday Readings
“The Hymn of Ceylon,” poem by W.S. Senior – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.
Reject the Religion of Efficiency – Samuel D. James at Digital Liturgies.
A question for the ages:
which is cleaner,
the unwashed hands
or the unwashed heart?
Another way to ask it:
what are we more
concerned with, dirty
hands or dirty heart? Or
what is more important,
to wash our hands or
to cleanse our hearts
of anger, lust, greed,
murder, desire, idolatry?
The man answered
the question two
millennia past, and
the answer is still
the same.
Photograph by McKenna Phillips via Unsplash. Used with permission.
Some Sunday Readings
Encircled, Enclosed, Squeezed In – Glenna Marshall.
What No Eye Has Seen – Lee Hutchings.
