Make My Heart New and Clean Again

A song of David, from Psalm 51

King David sat alone in his high stone room,
and inside him there was a stain.
Not the kind of dirty that washes off your hands.
The kind you cannot reach.

He had done a wrong thing, a real one, a heavy one,
and ever since Nathan told him the story of the one little lamb,
David could not pretend anymore.
He looked, and there was no soap enough to wash it.
He scrubbed, and it would not come clean.

So David did not run away from God.
He ran TO him.
He fell down low and began to sing,
a sad song, but a true one.

"O God," he sang,
"wash me.
Not a little. All the way through.
You can see the dark spot that I cannot reach.
I cannot get clean by myself.
I have tried. I am so tired.

Make my heart new and clean again.
New like the morning.
Clean like fresh-fallen snow.

Don't send me away from you, God.
That is the only thing I am afraid of,
that you would look at the stain
and turn your face away.
Please. Don't turn away.
Put your gladness back inside me.
Let me be safe again, and held again, and yours."

David asked.
He could only ask.
He could beg God for a clean heart,
but he could not make one himself.
No person ever could.
A boy cannot reach inside and trade his own heart for a new one.
Neither can you. Neither can I.

So David's song hangs in the air,
a question with no hands to answer it.
Wash me. Make me new.
WHO will do it? WHO can?

Far down the years, Someone was coming
who would do more than sing about clean water.
He would BE it.
He would kneel down lower than David ever fell,
and lift away the heavy stain that wasn't even his,
and carry it so far off
it could never be found again.

And then, gentle as morning,
he would reach inside the ones he loves
and do the thing no one else could do.
He would give them a brand-new heart,
soft where it was hard,
clean where it was stained,
alive.

David did not know his name yet.
But David's tired, longing song
was already reaching forward through all the years,
feeling its way toward him.

Jesus.

So if you ever feel that dirty-inside feeling,
the one you cannot reach,
you do not have to scrub at it alone.
You can do what David did.
You can run TO him and ask,
"Make my heart new and clean again."

He has never yet turned away
a sorry heart that came to him for washing.
He makes them new like morning,
clean like snow,
and glad enough to sing again.