What I’m Thinking: Aid, Truth, and Mercy

In Psalm 25, the poet asks God for aid and support, for truth, and for mercy. These are three of the great ingredients of faith.

Here’s a transcript:

I’m thinking about the 25th Psalm (Psalm 25:1-10). We enter Lent this week, and Lent is very much a time oriented toward personal introspection, although we have at Church of the Holy Cross offered a conversational approach to Lent, an invitation to share your spiritual journey through these next 46 days with a friend or someone whose spiritual integrity you trust.

Psalm 25 is a very personal psalm. It is not one of the coronation psalms. It is not a psalm of choral singing. It is a very personal, “I” subject kind of psalm. And there are three themes.

The first is a request to God that the person making the prayer not be put to shame. In fact, it is a direct request that those who are “wantonly treacherous” be put to shame instead.

The second theme is truth, that the psalmist might know what is true.

The third request is for mercy, and in that mercy for God to guide in the Divine way.

these are three great themes for the Lenten season but also, I think, three great themes for any life of faith. Without some sense of God’s protection, without some sense of God’s presence to preserve the spirit, I’m not sure that the life of faith makes any sense at all. Also, without some sense that some things are true and some things are false, and that a relationship with God helps us to distinguish one from the other, again: without that, a life of faith doesn’t make much sense.

But it’s that deep impression of God’s mercy that is so foundational in the Christian faith in particular, a mercy that is understanding and forgiving of not just past mistakes but past sins, those actual moral failings, the times when we fail to do what is good or right or fit, or we do what is wrong or bad or inappropriate.

God’s mercy is the great mercy that underlies all of our faith. May it carry us through this Lenten season.

That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.