We kicked off this new series by remembering first what the psalms were for. They were the ‘hymnbook’ of the Jewish people, sung and recited at every gathering and worship service, which shows us that to them, worship was more then praise and gratitude, it was the full gamut of all human emotion. Many of them were written by King David, who embodied what Israel knew itself to be: called and broken.
Psalm 32 is the perfect confession prayer for this condition - a condition that we share too: called and broken. And it builds to a declaration of what God called David, because of Jesus, we get to be called too: righteous. But as a starting place, we have to truly believe that being disconnected from self, other, and God himself (or the condition of ’shame’ as it’s more widely known) was never ever ever what God wants for us to feel. This can be the hardest part for many of us (especially if the church has historically been the place where we’ve experienced shame the most) but it’s true: God never ever wants you to feel shame.