Meditation: Psalm 51:3 (1) God, in your grace, have mercy on me;
in your great compassion, blot out my crimes.
4 (2) Wash me completely from my guilt,
and cleanse me from my sin.
12 (10) Create in me a clean heart, God;
renew in me a resolute spirit.
13 (11) Don’t thrust me away from your presence,
don’t take your Ruach Kodesh away from me.
18 (16) For you don’t want sacrifices, or I would give them;
you don’t take pleasure in burnt offerings.
19 (17) My sacrifice to God is a broken spirit;
God, you won’t spurn a broken, chastened heart.
1st Week of LentA heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn. (Psalm 51:19)
Imagine a group of nuns building a chapel by hand. They have one cart between them for carrying sand. One morning, that cart tips over six times in a row. Their leader comes and points out that maybe the trouble is that they need to repent for something. So the sisters pause, pray together, and realize that they have been criticizing one another in their hearts. After this admission and apologies all around, everyone is much more at peace. And the cart doesn’t tip over anymore!
This story is from Basilea Schlink, leader of the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary. In her book Repentance—The Joy-Filled Life, she shows how repentance is crucial if we want to grow in our relationship with the Lord.
Schlink writes that just as an earthly father “is waiting for a response from his children . . . our Father, who created us and who loves us with an unfathomable love, waits.” He waits for us to turn to him in repentance. He waits, oh so patiently, for us to turn back to him. Think of the “good thief” who hung on the cross next to Jesus. With just a few short words, he confesses that he has sinned, and he turns to Jesus for salvation. And right then and there, Jesus promises heaven! There, at the last hour, God’s patience paid off, and this man found the salvation he was longing for.
Jesus has not come “to call the righteous to repentance but sinners” (Luke 5:32). That’s all of us! His invitation is wide and generous. Whether we have committed horrible sins or just told little white lies, he asks us to come clean—and to come to him. He wants to shower us with his mercy, but he needs us to take the first step toward him in repentance.
As we come to Jesus with humble honesty about how we have fallen short, he will take care of the rest. This simple, honest confession, “I have sinned,” is all that he asks. That brief moment, when we are exposed before the Lord, is a moment of great joy for him. We have come back to him, and now he can embrace us, forgive us, and heal us!
“Father, thank you for your mercy! Help me always to be open and honest with you.” Amen!
Jonah 3:1 The word of Adonai came to Yonah a second time: 2 “Set out for the great city of Ninveh, and proclaim to it the message I will give you.” 3 So Yonah set out and went to Ninveh, as Adonai had said. Now Ninveh was such a large city that it took three days just to cross it. 4 Yonah began his entry into the city and had finished only his first day of proclaiming, ‘In forty days Ninveh will be overthrown,’ 5 when the people of Ninveh believed God. They proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least. 6 When the news reached the king of Ninveh, he got up from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes. 7 He then had this proclamation made throughout Ninveh: “By decree of the king and his nobles, no person or animal, herd or flock, is to put anything in his mouth; they are neither to eat nor drink water. 8 They must be covered with sackcloth, both people and animals; and they are to cry out to God with all their might — let each of them turn from his evil way and from the violence they practice. 9 Who knows? Maybe God will change his mind, relent and turn from his fierce anger; and then we won’t perish.”
10 When God saw by their deeds that they had turned from their evil way, he relented and did not bring on them the punishment he had threatened.
Luke 11:29 As the people crowded around him, Yeshua went on to say, “This generation is a wicked generation! It asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it — except the sign of Yonah. 30 For just as Yonah became a sign to the people of Ninveh, so will the Son of Man be for this generation. 31 The Queen of the South will appear at the Judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Shlomo, and what is here now is greater than Shlomo. 32 The people of Ninveh will stand up at the Judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they turned to God from their sins when Yonah preached, and what is here now is greater than Yonah.
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