At Peace with God

Reading: Psalm 32
There are two much-treasured qualities today – freedom and peace. They also seem the most elusive.

"Leave me alone, won’t you?" is our plea. "Just let me be." We are quite sure that freedom and peace are the result of being left alone to do our own thing. Yet the era of great freedom hasn’t led to personal peace. It is marked by a high level of stress-related illness. And the most successful "high-fliers" apparently lead the most stressful and unhappy lives.

St Augustine of Hippo said in his Confessions, "You awake us to delight in your praise; for you made us for yourself, and our heart is restless, until it rest in you."

Hymn-writer George Matheson wrote –

This is all so contrary to our way of approaching life, and yet it is the sober truth.

Carl Jung (1875-1961), the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist who founded analytic psychology, said that "the central neurosis of our time is emptiness." Towards the end of his life’s work, he commented that, of all the people he had treated across the years, there was not one who wouldn’t have been helped by a religious faith.

Psalm 32 begins, "Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit" (vv. 1,2).

Forgiven... covered... not counted against him... David acknowledges the reality of sin, but affirms the completeness of our forgiveness by God. The person who is totally open with God – "in whose spirit is no deceit" – is able to receive God’s blessing totally.

Failure to resolve guilt can bring physical effects – "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer" (vv. 3-4) – what might today be called psychosomatic illness.

"Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord' – and you forgave the guilt of my sin" (v. 5).

There are two aspects to guilt – the fact of having done wrong and the feeling of shame because we have failed. It is possible to have one without the other – actual guilt without a guilty feeling and a guilty feeling that is unrelated to actual guilt. When we have confessed our sin, God forgives – our sin is forgiven.

It is these forgiven ones whom David calls "you righteous", "you upright in heart" – "Rejoice in the Lord and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!" (v. 13)

Prayer: Loving Lord, too often we want to look good and feel great, we want to be noticed and be thought well of – when our greatest need is to come to you, to be forgiven, to know your love, to live again… Help us, Lord, in reaching out to those with hidden hurts, that all may know your grace to bring healing and peace. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

At Peace

I cannot be
at peace
when there is
wrong within.
I know
no inner calm
if I hold
onto sin.

My arms
I can lay down
and face
the God I wrong.
His arms outstretch
to hold me –
the guilt of sin
is gone.

I come
because you call –
my struggling
has ceased.
And in your arms
of love,
at last I am
at peace.


© Peter J. Blackburn, Burdekin BlueCare Devotions, 19 Febuary 2002.
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New International Version, © International Bible Society, 1984.

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