If you’ve known me for any amount of time, you’d know that I’m not really

an expert on gardening. I can keep fake plants alive and that’s about it.

When we were moving to Noosa, I had to to a bit of gardening. We had put in

a large garden box and so I had to fill it with a gravel base and then soil

on top of that. Let me tell you, that was a day of really heavy lifting

wheelbarrows and buckets and when I emptied them and took off the load, it

was a great relief! This Psalm reminds us that carrying around our sin and

not bringing them before God is like carrying a heavy bucket of gravel and

soil around!

The psalm begins with proclaiming how great or blessed it is for the one

who has had their sins forgiven. In some translations, they use the word

‘joyful’ here. How joyful it is to be forgiven. Then, the psalmist lays out

what the opposite is like. If we don’t bring our sins to God it’s like

having aches and pains all day long, it’s like dragging a heavy backpack

around, it’s like going for a walk in North Queensland in the middle of

summer in the heat and humidity! Having sin that is kept secret even before

God (not that it is a secret to God anyway!) Is not a good idea. It only

leads to further guilt and tremendous shame.

However, we can come to God. Verse 5 is such great news for us. We can come

to God and acknowledge our failures, confess our sins, and we can be

confident that he will forgive them. We can have this confidence because of

Jesus. He came to seek and save the lost, he came to bring forgiveness and

he secured it in his death on the cross and rising to new life. And so we

can join in with the joy of the psalmist and the joy of Zacchaeus for,

“blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven”. MC

Questions

What does it mean to be ‘blessed’?

Have you experienced the heavy load of sin before? How did you react?

How can we have relief from this heavy load?

Prayer

Loving Lord, I am sorry for my sin. I have left undone what I ought to have

done and I have done what I have ought not to have done. Please forgive me.

Thank you for the assurance of forgiveness through Jesus. In his name,

Amen.