Open My Lips

It's been quite a while since I last wrote here. How much things have changed. I'm sitting here in Tokyo, in a tiny service apartment. This morning as I was reading through a prayer devotional that my old college roommate gave me, I came across a passage that really hit me. It's from Psalm 51. This psalm is a heart wrenching confession by David to God after he is outed by Nathan for sleeping with Bathsheba and killing Uriah. I've read this psalm many times, but what struck me this time is verse 15. It reads: "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise." David's declaration reminded me of how corrupt and wayward we are. We are incapable, in our fallen state, of even praising our God, our Lord and Creator. David's supplication to have his lips opened so that he can sing praises to God are a stark reminder that God enables all things in us, even our ability to praise him for his goodness. And in acknowledging that on his own he cannot even praise his God, David writes verse 17: "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." As we cannot have any merit on our own, what God wants of us is to be broken in spirit, to acknowledge before God that we cannot on our own reach him. But that only through Christ and his sacrifice we are able to meet him face to face.