Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.

Within the grips of this sinful world, nothing is immune to decay.  Even as God’s redeemed children, we are still prone to sin, not completely free from the corruption of the fleshly nature within each of us.  And because of that, we will fail and fall short.  Because of that, we’ll sin against our holy God.  Because of that, there may be times where we descend down some dark and horrible path toward unrighteousness and end up in a heap of shame like David did.

But God’s creation proves that He is in the business of renewal.  The seasons and the days cycle through to fresh start after fresh start.  The beauty of God’s creation and God’s plan and God’s ways is that new life can come from dead places.  We can start over.  He can take a once-dirty heart and make a clean one.  He can take a sinful spirit and give us a right one instead.  He can change in us what seems so stubbornly impossible to change.  There is nothing so set in stone that God can’t do something about it.

Some damage was done from our sin, and so restoration is necessary.  But there is something that can come after sin.  We are not condemned to that state.  All that sin worked to create in us can be replaced by what God will now create in us.  Brokenness is fixed.  Wounds are healed.  Pain is eased.  And His Spirit is in us with all His love and goodness and everything else that comes with Him.  And what was decayed is revitalized by that life that He brings.  And the hope that He implants within our hearts helps us to get up and carry on despite what we’ve done.

God loves us so, so much.  His love for us flows wide and deep.  And so when sin has struck our lives and reduced us to rubble, when we’ve gone and made a mess of things, when that corruption has entered in, He can work with that.  He’s willing to step into our messiness and make things right again, rebuild the walls, clean up, and give us the kind of renewal that changes everything.  Let’s go to Him, then, and not shy away when we’ve sinned, but allow Him to fix what we can’t, to help and to heal as He showers us with His mercy and grace.