De Profundis…..

From the depths of despair, O LORD,
I call for your help.
Hear my cry, O Lord.
Pay attention to my prayer.

LORD, if you kept a record of our sins,
who, O Lord, could ever survive?
But you offer forgiveness,
that we might learn to fear you.

I am counting on the LORD;
yes, I am counting on him.
I have put my hope in his word.
I long for the Lord
more than sentries long for the dawn,
yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.

O Israel, hope in the LORD;
for with the LORD there is unfailing love.
His redemption overflows.
He himself will redeem Israel
from every kind of sin.

How often have you cried out to God in the misery of your circumstances. How often have you sought an answer to the problems you have faced, the fears that you could not face?

The authorship of this Psalm is anonymous, but it echoes a cry like many that King David wrote.

David, the warrior King, beloved of all Israel, cried out to God more often than he rejoiced. In moments of fear, failure, guilt, frustration, loneliness, he cried out to God. Almost every emotion you and I have experienced in our lives, David experienced.

‘De Profundis…” out of the depths of our pain we cry, because our eyes are seeing ourselves only and do not have the time and perception to understand why we have found ourselves in our predicament.

Although God in His compassion, laments with us, His reason differs from ours. We lament because of ourselves, our emotion; God, because, we lack understanding that He longs for us to have.

The psalmist points to the problem – sin. (sin is probably the most misunderstood word in the bible) The state of ‘sin’ is no more than being apart from God – doing our own thing, to use a contemporary expression.

The intense hope of the Psalmist is seeing the dawn of redemption, the dawn of the Son of Man, God incarnate – Jesus.

The Psalmist’s hope was reserved for another dawn; the dawn reserved for you and me. A hope free from all the cares and anxieties of this life.

Out of the depths of this dawn is the greatest treasure of all.

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