Psalm 130
1 Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord;
Lord, hear my voice; *
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.

2 If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, *
O Lord, who could stand?

3 For there is forgiveness with you; *
therefore you shall be feared.

4 I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; *
in his word is my hope.

5 My soul waits for the Lord,
more than watchmen for the morning, *
more than watchmen for the morning.

6 O Israel, wait for the Lord, *
for with the Lord there is mercy;

7 With him there is plenteous redemption, *
and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.


The words of Psalm 130 speak of forgiveness, mercy, and ‘plenteous redemption.’

After reading the Psalm, did anything jump out at you?

How about this: WITHOUT looking at the Psalm, try finishing verse 3:

“For there is forgiveness with you [O Lord]
therefore you shall be ________.”

What might you add to finish that verse? ‘Thanked,’ ‘Praised,’ ‘Blessed?”

Those might be nice thoughts, but those weren’t the thought of the Psalmist.

Now you can red verse 3 of Psalm 130:

“For there is forgiveness with you [O Lord]
therefore you shall be feared.”

Feared? Would that be your first choice? Is that your reaction to forgiveness?

Personally I had read Psalm 130 several times through this week until I realized what verse 3 actually said, and as soon as I realized what it said I was stopped in my tracks. It changed the way that I look at the entire Psalm.

Verses 4-6 speaks four times about ‘waiting’ for the Lord: I wonder, what kind of waiting is that? Is it like waiting for Santa Claus to come on Christmas morning, or is it more like waiting for dad to get home when you know you’re in trouble?

The forgiveness that is offered for our sins: the acceptance that God offers us regardless of our sins, shortcomings, things we’ve done, or things we have left undone can be overwhelming – dare I say *should* be overwhelming.

Maybe on the surface, fear in the face of forgiveness seems odd today, but I think if we look a little deeper we will see that it’s probably a little closer to our actual experience.

All of us – ALL of us – have done things we’re not proud of. In our lives we’ve hurt other people, we’ve hurt ourselves, we deliberately turned away from God, we’ve blown it big time, and sometimes we’re even aware that we’ve done such things.

And sometimes these things we’ve done aren’t in the past: we’re still doing them.

Some of us carry these things around as great burdens. We feel shame, and unworthiness, and embarrassment.

Deep down – in the depths of our souls – we know that there is no escape from these things. They define us. They mark us. And they will always be looming in the back of our minds.

But, there is a deeper knowing, so deep that sometimes it is forgotten, or dismissed as nonsense: our sins and shortcomings do not define us, they do not mark us because we are marked by Christ’s wounds on the Cross, we are marked as Christ’s own forever in our baptism: with God there is forgiveness, mercy, and plenteous redemption.

The real fear of course, is dealing with what we’ve done in the first place. God doesn’t just wipe away everything without some work from us first: we have to name our sins and shortcomings, we have to own them, we have to say that we’ve done things we know were hurtful.

Yes, ‘waiting’ for God is like waiting for dad to get home, but the Good News is that every time our heavenly father comes home to hear what we’ve done, forgiveness and mercy pours down – rains down. Maybe that’s scary too: with everything we’ve done, and everything we are, God still loves us: JUST as we are.

One of the first situations I was thrown into not long after my ordination was the impending death of a man. He had a family, and his family was gathering around him as he rapidly got worse and worse, and as death got closer and closer.

What makes this death really stick out for me is that, like all of us, this man had done things that he hadn’t been proud of. He had committed some pretty flat-out identifiable sins. He knew that the things he had done were wrong, but my best guess is that the shame and regret was too deep and painful for him. And so, instead of deal with his brokenness and shame, instead of seeking forgiveness from God and his family, he hid it all. He buried it all as deep as it would go.

The trouble is, that’s never deep enough. In God’s good time all things are exposed, all things are brought to the surface.

Fear of the truth brought him to hide: and probably fear of forgiveness kept him in hiding

For this man, as he slipped into unconsciousness, as his breaths became shallower and shallower, the web of lies he had spun to cover his sins and shortcomings began to unravel. And in a matter of a few hours all was known.

For his children there was anger, feelings of betrayal, rage.

But, here’s the amazing thing: as I watched this family deal with its grief and anger over death and betrayal, I was drawn to watch his wife.

After everything that had come into the light, after all that had become known, she cared for him still. She washed him, she anointed his skin with ointment so that it wouldn’t dry out and hurt. She turned him on his side regularly, so that there would be no pain.

There wasn’t anyone involved in that situation who wouldn’t have understood if she had turned away from him, as he had so obviously turned away from her. No one would have held it against her at all.

She didn’t have to lovingly care for him until his last breath, but she did.

In that death, I, and I hope he, got to see what the mercy of God is like: undeserved, uncalled-for, and totally overwhelming.

Is it so big, so incredible, so overwhelming that it should be met with fear and trembling? Yeah. But, it is there: mercy, forgiveness, and plenteous redemption.

Whatever we’ve done, whatever we’ve said, no matter how bad we’ve hurt someone else, no matter how far we’ve turned from God, grace, forgiveness, and mercy are there to meet us.

There may be fear in us – the fear of facing our own demons – but when God comes with his forgiveness, mercy, and plenteous redemption there is no need for deep-seeded fear, just profound thanks.