Waiting for Daylight

I cry out to you from the depths, Lord—my Lord, listen to my voice! – Psalm 130:1

Dear Gatherers,

While we’ve spent Lent in the Psalms, I’ve been preaching for a Disciples of Christ church on Chicago’s North Shore. They’ve been in John’s Gospel, working through very complicated narratives like the Samaritan woman and the man born blind. It’s not surprising that the Psalms and Gospels comment on one another. And digging into these passages has been a special blessing to me.

The Gospel stories are all about transformation. The woman at the well is transformed when Jesus gives her living water. The man born blind is transformed when Jesus gives him new sight. In the background to both stories, we find a grumpy group of Pharisees who seem always upset about something Jesus has done.

Meanwhile, the Psalms are all about forgiveness from sin—texts that the Pharisees surely knew by heart but somehow lost sight of. (Jesus actually accuses them of blindness in the healing story.) And that’s got me thinking lately about ways we may have become blind to forgiveness. What is that experience like—to be forgiven? The writer of Psalm 130 compares it to be lifted from the darkest depths to watch for morning light. That’s a magnificent image we’ll explore more deeply this Sunday on YouTube. For now, let’s take some time and work with that: God has forgiven us, is forgiving us, will always forgive us. What does that mean for us? How does it feel? Let it lift you!

See you on Sunday at 5pm on YouTube!

Peace,

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