“Create in me a clean heart, O God.
Renew a loyal spirit within me.”—Psalm 51:10
Renewal, like commitment, is not something that happens once and is done with. Sometimes we forget that. We think that having had the experience once, we are good. We think that we have checked it off the list. One more thing accomplished. One more experience off the bucket list.
But renewal isn’t like that. Renewal is like the commitment one makes on their wedding day. A commitment that must be reaffirmed the next day, the day after that, the next week and so on, for all the moments of temptation or boredom or frustration one faces in all the days to come.
Renewal must be experienced again and again and again because our spirits are so easily exhausted. It doesn’t take much for the life of faith to go off the rails. A time of elevated stress can lead to the neglect of spiritual practices and a feeling of being far from God … or God being far from us. A sudden loss or even a sudden gain can distract us from our relationship with God. The simple routine of life can lead us to a point where we realize that we have been going on about our business without involving God in our living at all.
It happens easily. And that might seem terribly frightening. Faith, the relationship with the living God of the universe, His only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, can be a fairly fragile thing. But the good news is, God longs for relationship with us. God longs to renew the poor in spirit. God longs for our hearts to burn for Him.
And therefore, as fragile as faith may be, it is also a thing easily renewed. What is needed is a heart that truly longs for closeness with God and the willingness to pray that God will create in us a clean heart, will renew in us a loyal spirit.
That is my prayer every time Christians gather in worship; every time I sit down to write a sermon, every time I am about to preach that sermon. That is my prayer for us as individuals, for each of our congregations and for our church as a whole: that God would be relentless in creating in us clean hearts and loyal spirits.
I pray this because there is a whole world outside each of our doorways that needs us to live with clean hearts and spirits that are loyal to Jesus. Our world is broken and sometimes desperately dark. But we are called to be the light that shines in the darkness, the hope for a world that is broken.
And we will only be able to shine if we are renewed and strong in our relationship with the One who is the source of all our hope, all our light.
About Rebekah Mitchell
Rev. Rebekah Mitchell is associate minister at St. Andrew’s, Brampton, Ont.
