Prayer Concerning a Clean Heart

                Read Psalm 51.

¹ Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
    blot out my transgressions.
² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
    and cleanse me from my sin.

³ For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
⁴ Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
    and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
    and blameless when you pass judgment.
⁵ Indeed, I was born guilty,
    a sinner when my mother conceived me.

⁶ You desire truth in the inward being;
    therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
⁷ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
    wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
⁹ Hide your face from my sins,
    and blot out all my iniquities.

¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and put a new and right spirit within me.
¹¹ Do not cast me away from your presence,
    and do not take your holy spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
    and sustain in me a willing spirit.

¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
    and sinners will return to you.
¹⁴ Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
    O God of my salvation,
    and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.

¹⁵ O Lord, open my lips,
    and my mouth will declare your praise.
¹⁶ For you have no delight in sacrifice;
    if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
¹⁷ The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

¹⁸ Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
    rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,
¹⁹ then you will delight in right sacrifices,
    in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
    then bulls will be offered on your altar.

 

 

               Clean hands I can hope to offer you, Lord, but hardly ever a clean heart.  I know myself well enough to know I can make good only half of the prayer of the psalmist.  I can discipline myself into making the words of my mouth acceptable in your sight, but controlling the meditations of my heart seems to lie beyond me. 

                Because it is beyond me, set me free from sentencing myself to forty lashes every time a mean, sordid, or petty feeling wells up inside me.  Help me to accept calmly the fact that such feelings are going to come repeatedly.  If I feel guilt or shame today, let them become the healthy, constructive guilt and shame that I attach to what I can control, and not the morbid, destructive guilt attached to feelings I can never hope totally to dominate.

                We know there are deep layers of our minds that will never be nicely civilized. As long as we live we will keep generating anxieties and hostilities that may shock us when they come bubbling into consciousness.  We know that some of the regions of our minds where we form feelings and dreams are out of reach to our management.  We have only shaky control of the gate through which they pass into the light of our awareness.

                However, I ask that I never use that for which I am not responsible as an excuse for shirking that for which I know I am responsible.  If I cannot shut out unworthy feelings, I can shut out unworthy deeds.  If I cannot block uninvited feelings from entering, I can refuse to give them the best room in the house, and I can refuse to encourage them to stay.

                These are not small things, and they lie within my power.