Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. – Psalm 32:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 24, 2019): Psalm 32

As St. Augustine (Augustine of Hippo) was suffering the illness that would result in his death on August 28, 430, he requested that David’s twelve penitential Psalms be hung around his room so that he could meditate on them in his illness. The first of the penitential Psalms, Psalm 32, he requested be hung on the wall next to his bed, so that he could meditate on it better as he lay there in his sickness. As the great Bishop lay dying, he knew the truth of the words that David had written almost fifteen hundred years earlier. “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.” The man who had admitted his sins in his biographical “Confessions” three decades earlier, knew the release from the things that he had done wrong. As Augustine lay dying, he knew the truth of David’s words. It was not just some grand idea of sins forgiven. His transgressions were forgiven; his sins were covered.

The image that David seems to give to us is that of someone who, when God looks at us, he does not see the sin. Maybe it is still there, but if it is covered and out of sight. As Christians, a better image might be that our sin is buried. When we are crucified with Christ, our sins die and are separated from us and hid someplace where they will never be found. We think that God knows everything, but I am not convinced that that is true. The one thing he doesn’t seem to know or to dwell over is our sin. Once the sin is confessed and dealt with, it is gone, and God remembers it no more. The truth is that St. Augustine knew his sin better than God did because God had dealt with it and buried it – and forgotten it. And that same truth applies to our sin as well. It is gone. We may remember it, but God doesn’t

So David writes “Blessed is the one whose transgressions are forgiven.” Charles Spurgeon points out “The word blessed is in the plural, oh, the blessednesses! the double joys, the bundles of happiness, the mountains of delight!” All of this available to us because our sins are forgiven, covered, separate, buried and forgotten by God.

Now, if only we could forget them too.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 33