We Wait for Mercy

Psalm 130 was written for people on the move — pilgrims climbing the road to Jerusalem, singing their way toward the festival and the sacrifice waiting at the top. But the song does not begin in celebration. It begins in the water. "Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD." In the ancient world the deep meant chaos and death, the place no one climbs out of on his own. And as the psalm unfolds we learn that these depths are not circumstances pressing in from outside. The psalmist is drowning in his own sin.

Most of us know that feeling, and few of us name it out loud. We are tired in a way a vacation does not fix, because there is no week off from the war inside us. Many of us also carry a picture of God that makes the exhaustion worse — God with a clipboard, tallying, waiting for us to cross the line one last time so he can finally be done with us.

The psalm dismantles that picture in a single verse. If God kept a record of iniquities, not one of us could stand — not the worst sinner among us, and not the most faithful. And then comes the surprise: but with you there is forgiveness. The wonder of Psalm 130 is not that God notices our sin. It is what he chooses to do with sinners. With him is steadfast covenant love and plentiful redemption — mercy that never runs low, more forgiveness than he knows what to do with.

Every lamb that died at the top of that hill was pointing past itself to the day God would provide the sacrifice himself. Jesus went down into depths deeper than ours, carried our iniquities, and bore the judgment none of us could withstand, so that verse 4 could become true of us. So we are not waiting for forgiveness. We wait because we have already been forgiven — watching for the morning like men on a wall. And when that morning comes, the night will never return.