Make My Heart Clean and New

(a song from Psalm 51)

Do you know what it feels like
to have done something wrong,
and feel it stuck inside you,
like a smudge you cannot wash?

David knew that feeling.
Long before, when he was a shepherd boy,
he had sung glad songs to God in the fields.
But now he had done a terrible thing,
and after, when night came,
his heart felt heavy and dirty and sore.

He did not run away from God.
He ran toward him.
And this is the song he sang:

"O God who loves me,
look at me with kindness.
Not because I am good.
I am not good today.
Look at me because you are gentle,
and your love is wide as the sky.

I can feel the wrong I did.
It will not let me go.
I have tried to scrub it out,
but my hands are too small,
and the smudge is too deep,
deeper than my fingers reach.

Only you can wash me.
Wash me, and I will be clean.
Wash me whiter than the snow,
whiter than the first snow,
the kind no one has stepped in yet.

And God,
do not just clean the outside of me.
Reach all the way in.
Make me a new heart.
A heart that is soft and clean.
Put a steady, glad spirit inside me,
and do not take your nearness away.

Give me back my gladness.
Let me feel safe with you again."

David asked for something
no sponge, no soap,
and no long stretch of time
could ever give him:
a brand-new heart,
a clean place where the smudge used to be.

David did not know yet
how God would do it.
But God already knew.

The day was coming
when Jesus would step into the dirty water of the world
and take the smudge, every smudge, from every heart,
and carry it far away,
and wash his children whiter than snow.

And he would do something more.
He would give you his own Spirit
to live inside you, like a brand-new heart:
soft where you were hard,
clean where you were sore,
glad where you were ashamed.

So if there is a dirty feeling in you tonight,
a smudge you cannot scrub,
you do not have to scrub it.
You can borrow David's song
and make it your very own prayer.
Turn toward the One who loves you
and say, "Wash me. Make me new."
He has never once said no to that prayer.
He will wash you whiter than the first snow,
and give you a heart as clean as morning.