Asking for Mercy (Ps. 6:1)

O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, Neither chasten me in thine hot displeasure. (Ps. 6:1)

I always feel a need to justify texts like this, or at least make sense of them. Does this suggest God is fickle, vindictive, or capricious? Is God prone to lash out and so must we duck the head?

I think not, based on a simple implication of the goodness of God. So what are we to make of this.

God is not to be trifled with. This is true and we do well to remember, we who have all of our God-talk and so easily put Him in our little boxes.

But I think the bigger issue is simply our humanity. We know we are fickle, vindictive, and capricious. We know we ourselves cannot be trusted to keep our cool. And so we naturally project that on to God and have reasonable fear he will treat us as we treat others.

Of course there is truth in that and so this brings us home. God does chasten and he is displeased, sometimes such that we would feel the heat.

Yet it is ok to ask for mercy. If we have not shown mercy then there is slim chane we will receive. But if we have shown mercy, we can believe God will show mercy to us and so we can pray with the Psalmist: “Please, Lord, don't be too hard on me.”

“His mercy endures forever.” Alleluiah!