Friday, February 28, 2020
Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me—now let me rejoice. Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Psalm 51:7-11[1]
According to some people (people who can think way beyond my
capacity to understand…and thereby make my head hurt when I read and try to
understand them), you can actually un-ring a bell. It’s part of A-B theorem’s linear-versus-tenseless
philosophy of time. (I warned you it hurts to think like this).
Well, you cannot literally un-ring what’s
been rung, but the thought is that whenever they figure out how to traverse the
time-travel thing, you’ll be able to go back to before the bell was rung, and
maybe not ring the thing. Do I hear an amen
from Outlander fans?
King David hated hearing the sound of the bell representing his
sin with Bathsheba, and the ensuing coverup conspiracy resulting in the murder
of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah. David
wanted to un-ring the indelible stain that had blackened his soul and spirit. David was known for his integrity, compassion,
and fairness as ruler; now his integrity was gone, as was any memory of
compassion and objective judgment as a king.
David was damaged goods, and the misery was eating him alive. If only time-travel could let him go back and
un-ring his lust!
You cannot undo the past.
Even under the tenseless Box theory of time, where all moments of existence
co-exist simultaneously, to re-enter another moment (and not split the balance
of metaphysics into a gazillion faceted dilemma), you cannot alter the future
from the past. That being said I shall
return to a less head-hurting consideration:
God can! As Creator/author of
time, and space, and us, God can do whatever He wills with time and space.
And so, this is where the rubber of David’s stained soul meets the
road of God’s ability to un-ring the bell of our sin; His forgiveness does the
unforgiveable. God doesn’t remove an
event from our past, but when we confess our sins to him in total faith and
repentance, He restores to us the joy of a soul cleansed of guilt and shame. This is what David means when he prays for
God’s Holy Spirit to not be taken from him. The restoration for which David prays is the
return of right relationship with God.
For
You Today
You chew on
that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
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