O God,
You have trodden
our iniquities underfoot
and have cast
all our sins
into the depth of the sea.
You have forgotten
as You have forgiven.
The rising sun is not darkened
by my dark yesterday;
my hot rebellion of yesteryear
has not dried
this year's compassionate rain
or parched the teeming earth
on which I walk.
Oh, still this guilty memory of mine,
this dark and unadmitted doubt of You,
this questioning of Your forgiveness
and Your forgetting.
Oh, do not let them rise again to torment me,
those harsh defacements of my fellowman,
those words that flew,
arrows fiery with my anger,
those proud and bitter clashes
of me against my neighbor,
those ragged neglects of simple duty.
Your Son's cross stands empty against the sky.
Your Son's grave is open wide.
Your angels have spoken.
And Your Son sits at Your right hand,
for me, for me.
Let me remember this;
let me forget.
--Martin Franzmann, Pray for Joy, pp. 23, 24.
2 comments:
These are wonderful words. It always amazes me when I hear that promise from Jeremiah, “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sins no more.” But we keep remembering again and again – at least I do, about certain things.
Only at the end, the “for me, for me” is a little jarring. As followers of “The Selfless One” would it not be more appropriate for us to say, “for me too, for me too,” or “even for me, even for me”? At least the brothers at Nicaea wrote “Who for US men, and for OUR salvation …” rather than “for me and my salvation.”
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart
George, agreed! Salvation is definitely a we thing more than an I thing. Can't help but note the difference in hymnody when the early Reformation we slipped into proto-pietism's I.
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