Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity (Psalm 51:9).

“Wow, I hope nobody saw that.”

How many times have you thought those words?

Oh, come on—it’s more than that and you know it.

When you do something embarrassing, you simply don’t want people looking at you.  Whether it’s missing the easy shot, tripping over your own feet, or walking into the only tetherball pole in an entire acre of middle school asphalt—all of which I have done—you don’t want an audience.  You kinda want the ground to open up and swallow you, just so that no one can look at you.

When you do something truly wrong—when you intentionally sin—that feeling goes way past embarrassment.

It becomes shame.

And you would do anything, just anything, to turn back the clock, to undo what you did, or at least to dissolve into the ground, just so that no one can look at you.

David gets you.  He’s been there, only bigger.  He cried out to God to look away from him, to act as if he hadn’t seen David’s sin.  He begged his Lord to take the sin away, to make it as though it had never occurred.

And God did.

Consequences?  Oh, yes, there were consequences.

There always are.

But David’s relationship with God was restored.

God did that because David was his Beloved.

Oh, yeah—you and I are Beloved, too.

Wow.

Happy Thursday, Beloved.