February 20 - Psalm 51:7

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Psalm 51:7

 

I am a leper.

 

I don't have spots on my skin, but I do have black spots on my heart.

 

When King David in Psalm 51 confessed the black spot of his adulterous, murderous affair with Bathsheba, he chooses a metaphor from the cleansing of a leper. That old Jewish ritual -- Leviticus 14:5-7 -- went like this:

• A person with a skin disease with present themselves to the priest.
• Two wild birds were their offering.
• The priest will sacrifice on of the birds and drain his blood into a pot of water.
• While the second bird is being washed in the first birds blood, the priest will use a hyssop brand to sprinkle the unclean person also with blood.
• Then the priest sets the live bird free. As it flies away, it symbolizes that the unclean person is free too. 

A broken and contrite David wanted his spirit to soar again like a bird. Therefore, he cried, "Give me a branch. Sprinkle me with blood." That's the invitation of the Gospel too. The cleansing branch is the cross and from it we have been sprinkled with His blood. 

 

Christ chose to be the sparrow who died for us. But then, with the resurrection, he was also the sparrow that flied away free. We can fly too, for "just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might [fly] in newness of life" (Acts 2:24).

 

In Christ's Love,

a guy (who along with the cat and Mary Louise)

caught a bird in our house a few weeks ago.

We thought he was dead.

But as soon as we took him outside, he flew away free.

Let's not play dead any longer!