by Connor Phelan, Junior at Regina Dominican High School
As I read through Psalm 51, I am reminded of the countless hours I spent both in Sunday School and at home watching episode after episode of Veggie Tales. It’s so interesting to me now that I look back and think about how a group of limbless, talking, vegetables were able to help teach me about God’s message. Thinking about those vegetables, I specifically remember the episode in which Bob the Tomato read a letter he and Larry the Cucumber had received from a young boy asking about sin. After explaining right versus wrong and the basics of sin, Bob proceeded to say that we could ask for God’s forgiveness whenever we had committed a sin, but that we would only be forgiven seven times seventy-seven times. I couldn’t believe it. There I was, just a mere six or seven year old wanting to play with my friends, please my parents, go about my life normally and here was a tomato telling me I better not mess up too much before I get too old, because God’s counting.
Believe it or not, I believed that tomato for many years.
It wasn’t until two years ago during my freshman year of high school when I started confirmation classes and was asked to challenge my faith that I started to really consider where I was on my faith journey, and what things like sin really meant to me. So when I read over Psalm 51, not only am I struck with childhood memories, but also a new view of sin.
The whole Psalm, to me, gives the impression of a cry for help to God from a sinner. But who is that sinner? That sinner is each and every one of us. We were each created in the image of God, but we are also sinners and flawed humans. But this doesn’t mean that God dislikes us because we often times get it wrong, it means our faults give us even more opportunities to turn to God and grow closer in our relationship with Him. As the Psalm says, we were sinners even before we were born, but God also took the time to instill love into our hearts and minds so that one day when we grew up, we would find the love of Christ and turn to Him in times of need, like after we sinned.
What Psalm 51 is saying is that we’re humans, we get it wrong, and we try our best to fix things before they get worse. But really, nothing can truly be fixed without the helping hand of God. God is always there, right beside us, even when we misstep. The Psalm is encouraging us to come forward to God with whatever is on our hearts, no matter how immoral the sin, and turn over what we’ve done wrong. It’s telling us to ask God to mark out our sins and turn our hearts away from committing any further sins. The final piece, and perhaps the most fascinating, is that the Psalm tells us that after we have poured out our hearts, we should rejoice and worship in God’s goodness, because He has forgiven us and we have been set free from our errors.
And this is what I love about our God. He implants love into our flawed souls, and knows that as humans, we will fall down…a lot. But there is never a time when God turns His back because of something we did incorrectly. God is continually pouring out His love and forgiveness for us, and it is up to us to choose whether to accept or reject that forgiveness. When we truly come forward to God and are honest, we can be forgiven even more than seven times seventy-seven times, because God loves us that much, and will never stop loving us.
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