As the weeks passed and the therapy progressed, my aunt did regain some use of her arm; but her leg remained dead. When it was eventually decided that her leg could not be restored to usefulness, the therapy was discontinued. Since her paralyzed leg precluded her from caring for herself, and since she could not afford to pay for home care, her only viable option was to remain where she was—in the nursing home.

Her reaction to all this wasn’t good. She became angry in spirit, abusive in speech, and ugly in outlook. Her vitriol was such that several staff members finally refused to tend to her. No longer was she the upbeat, quickwitted, decorous aunt I had known all my life; she had become a bitter, crabby, choleric old woman.

The 29th chapter of Jeremiah contains a letter God sent to Jews undergoing a social and emotional turmoil similar to my aunt’s. His advice to those taken from Judea and transported into captivity was this: make yourselves at home (v 5), get on with the business of life in your new home (v 6), and pray for the peace of your new home (v 7). The exiles needed to accept the reality that Chaldea was their new home.

I really think this message has something to say to our contemporary culture. Increasingly (and, so I believe, to our society’s detriment), socialized care is the fate of the elderly and infirm. Everyday people are carted from their homes to sterile facilities where they are locked in with malodorous smells and linoleum-tile floors, where they are cared for by people they’ve never met, eat food they can barely stomach, and live among people who have lost their mind. And like it or not, a probable scenario for me and my fellow baby-boomers is that the time will come when we, too, will “be taken where [we] have no wish to go” (John 21.18, Moffatt). When that day arrives, we can stage an angry rebellion, hang onto lies and false hopes (Jeremiah 29.8), or become so sour in heart that we are shunned, even by those closest to us.

Or . . . we can accept the fact that the nursing home is now our home. And there we can remember that a situation doesn’t have to be ideal to be good (Phil. 4.11–13), and that doors can open, even when our spirit is disquieted (2 Cor. 2.12–13), and that the Lord’s mercies fail not, but are renewed every day (Lam. 3.22–23). Believing such things is all that is necessary for a Daniel or Ezekial to flourish.

About a week ago, during a visit with my aunt, she suddenly confessed that she had become a terrible person once she realized she wouldn’t be returning home, and that she had finally accepted the fact that her hospital-style room, with her 103-year-old roommate on the other side of the curtain, was now her home. Further, she said she was determined to return to her old, agreeable self. May the Lord bless my aunt to achieve this good aim.

And if the day should come when institutionalized care is my lot, may God grant me a remembrance of Jeremiah 29, so that I might learn to be at home—even when the time comes for me to leave home.

On a basic level, Matthew’s prologue (1.1–4.16) simply introduces his story of Jesus. But at a deeper level, the prologue is a carefully crafted text that highlights two key Christological themes—sovereignty and submission—that bracket the book. Christ’s sovereignty (1.1–2.23) and submission (3.1–4.16) at the beginning of the Gospel anticipate His submission (26.36–27.66) and sovereignty (28.1–20) at the end.

Contextually, the narrative in 4.1–11 furthers the point of 3.13–17. Matthew wants us to know that Christ fulfilled all righteousness not only at the Jordan but also in the wilderness when “evil appears before Him in all its tremendous strength and naked horror in the personality of the devil” (G. C. Morgan).

There are so many important angles from which to study the temptation that trying to say something about it on one page is almost an injustice. Nevertheless, here are some thoughts concerning Satan’s methodology in the temptation of Christ (2 Cor. 2.11).

First Temptation (4.3–4) If I am right in understanding Jesus’ baptism (3.14–17) as expressing His solidarity with sinners, it seems that this became Satan’s first target of opportunity. Sensing opportunity in Christ’s hunger (4.2), the devil said, “Fix yourself something to eat.” Makes sense to me. He who turned water to wine (John 2.8–9) could have easily turned stones to bread and eased His intense hunger. But to have done so would have been at odds with the identification implied in the baptism. If Christ, who claimed a willingness to limit Himself by our limits (Heb. 2.11–18), refused our limitations because He was hungry, what assurance was there that He wouldn’t bail out when facing the horrors of Calvary (cf. 26.37–38, 53; 27.40)? Christ, however, saw through the reasonableness of this temptation to its lethalness.

Second Temptation (4.5–7) The next temptation flowed from the first. Christ answered the first temptation with Scripture (Deut. 8.3), and the next thing you know the devil is quoting Scripture. “So, you’re going to trust God and follow his word? Let’s just see about that. If you’re as trusting of him as you claim, why don’t you prove it by jumping off the temple. After all, Psalm 91.11–12 promises that he won’t let any harm come to you.” Satan never hesitates to quote the Bible when it serves his purpose (2 Cor. 11.13–15; 2 Pet. 3.16). His use of Psalm 91 betrays just about every way he perverts Scripture

(taking texts out of context, applying figurative language literally, etc.).

Third Temptation (4.8–10) Twice repulsed, my sense is that Satan loses patience and goes for the knockout by offering a Faustian bargain that required Jesus to just once (the devil used aorist verbs) take the road most traveled—the shortcut, the path of least resistance where the end justifies the means. Christ, however, refused to rationalize disobeying the first commandment.

Three strikes and the devil was out.

To see why Christ could hold firm in the wilderness (and everywhere else), study His four sayings in the prologue (3.17, 4.4,6,10); they reveal an attitude of total devotion to God’s will and an absolute belief in the authority, harmony, and applicability of God’s word.

Oscar Wilde said he could resist everything but temptation. Christ resisted temptation. Utilizing nothing unavailable to us, He routed the archenemy and showed the potential resident within us all. On a mountain, He rejected an offer of world dominion (4.8–10) for a course of obedience—which ultimately led Him to another mountain where He was given all dominion in heaven and earth (28.16,18)—because of His obedience. It was His submission that enabled His sovereignty (Phil. 2.5–11).

Could Jesus have succumbed to temptation? Absolutely! But He didn’t. And in that truth is His glory and our hope.

They were smart to avoid the subject.

To call someone an unbeliever is not to say they have no beliefs, for unbelievers have many beliefs—including some unbelievable ones. And when these are clearly delineated, most folks see that the Emperor’s new clothes are no clothes at all!

To illustrate, let’s look at this business of ultimate reality. My ultimate reality is the God who revealed Himself in Jesus Christ—but what is it for the atheist? Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, and host of the popular PBS series Cosmos, summarized it this way: “the cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be” (qtd. by Ron Rhodes, The 10 Things You Should Know about the Creation vs. Evolution Debate, 33). Put another way, the atheistic ultimate reality boils down to the “uniformity of causes in a closed system” (Francis Schaeffer, Escape from Reason, 36). I’m not giving you a caricature or straw man here; this is what atheists say they believe. Now this belief has many implications, but for this article, I’ll call attention to just three.

• The physical order is the only order there is. The explanation for everything (the universe, man, etc.) is found in nature, not outside it (hence, per Schaeffer, nature is a closed system).

• The physical order is governed by cause-and-effect. All actions are contingent, being determined by prior actions. The orbit of planets, for instance, isn’t arbitrary, but is governed by certain physical principles. So also the path of a billiard ball; a billiard ball isn’t free to choose its own course; its course is a consequent, determined by antecedent considerations (mass, force, etc.).

• Since man is a part of the physical order, he isn’t qualitatively different from billiard balls or anything else in the physical order. As Elton Trueblood put it, “Whatever we do is the direct result of a combination of physical factors” (The Logic of Belief, 100).

If atheists are right, and the world in only ruled by physical cause-and-effect, where does that leave us?

Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen for physical or chemical reasons to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? . . . if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course, I can’t trust the arguments leading to atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an atheist, or anything else. (C. S. Lewis, qtd. by James D. Bales, Forty Two Years on the Firing Line, 46).

I forget who said it, but if naturalistic cause-and-effect is all there is, there isn’t any real difference between saying “I think” and “I itch”; both are but the results of natural causes. Can you see why unbelievers shy away from talking about their ultimate reality? If they could prove their belief, they would destroy any reason for believing their belief. If atheism is true, atheistic beliefs are not intellectual concepts at which the atheist freely arrived; they are just sensations produced by physical forces beyond his control. Thus, men have no real freedom to deliberate and decide—everything about them is merely the result of physical causes.

If in this life only all we have is physical cause-and-effect, we are of all men most miserable.

Most folks today have never heard of Dorothy Sayers (1893–1957). If they have, they probably know her as the author of a popular series of mystery stories featuring the fictional sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. Only a scant few know that she (among other things): was one of the first women to receive a degree from Oxford, had a son born out of wedlock, was the person believed to have coined the phrase “it pays to advertise,” was a founding member—along with G. K. Chesterton—of The Detection Club, and was a valued friend of C. S. Lewis.

My interest in Sayers derives from her religious writings. In The Mind of the Maker, Letters to a Diminished Church, and A Matter of Eternity (a compendium edited by Rosamond Kent Sprague), I have frequently found her insights into the Biblical story to border on the brilliant. To give you a taste of her thought, here is an excerpt from The Man Born to Be King, a series of twelve radio dramatizations of the life of Christ aired by the BBC in four week intervals between December 21, 1941 and October 18, 1942. In these programs Sayers attempted to cut through the “air of stained-glass-window decorum” in which the Gospels are usually read, to show that the characters associated with Christ were not sacred personages, but ordinary people—like us.

God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own—in the over-ripeness of the most splendid and sophisticated Empire the world has ever seen. In a nation famous for it’s religious genius and under a government renowned for its efficiency, He was executed by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators. His executioners made vulgar jokes about Him, called Him filthy names, taunted Him, smacked Him in the face, flogged Him with the cat,* and hanged Him on the common gibbet—a bloody, dusty, sweaty, and sordid business. . . . It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear that story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday, and not experience any shock at all. Herod the Great was no monstrous enemy of God: he was a soldier of fortune and a political genius—a savage but capable autocrat, whose jealousy and ungovernable temper had involved him in a prolonged domestic wretchedness. Matthew the Publican was a contemptible little quisling official, fleecing his own countrymen in the service of the occupying power and enriching himself in the process, until something came to change his heart. . . . Pontius Pilate was a provincial governor, with a very proper desire to carry out Imperial justice, but terrified (as better men than he have been before and since) of questions in the House, commissions of inquiry and what may be generically called “Whitehall”. Caiaphas was the ecclesiastical politician, appointed, like one of Hitler’s bishops, by a heathen government, expressly that he might collaborate with the New Order and see that the Church toed the line drawn by the State. . . . As for the Elders of the Synagogue, they are to be found on every Parish Council—always highly respectable, often quarrelsome, and sometimes in a crucifying mood.

So with all of them. Tear off the disguise of the Jacobean [i.e., King James] idiom, go back to the homely and vigorous Greek of Mark or John, translate it into its current English counterpart, and there every man may see his own face. We played the parts in that tragedy, nineteen and a half centuries since, and perhaps are playing them to-day, in the same good faith and in the same ironic ignorance.

*Cat-o’nine-tails: a whip used for flogging; known as a “cat.”

“For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one” Hebrews 2.11

And well may God with the serving-folk
Cast in His dreadful lot;
Is not He too a servant,
And is not He forgot?

G. K. Chesterton

The Ballad of the White Horse, IV.85–88

As I outline Matthew, the prologue (1.1–4.16) breaks into two sections, each of which introduces a singular theme concerning Christ. In the first section (1.1–2.23), His sovereignty is stressed—He is the son of David and the son of God, born King of the Jews and worshiped by Gentiles. In the second section (3.1–4.16), His submission is emphasized—His obedience to God’s will being demonstrated in His baptism and temptation.

The narrative preceding Christ’s baptism in chapter 3 contains a glaring paradox—it tells of John balking at baptizing Pharisees and Sadducees because they were not worthy of his baptism and then of him balking at baptizing Jesus because his baptism was not worthy of Jesus! Given this oxymoron that was obvious to John, why did God require His Son be baptized?

The direct answer, of course, is the one given by Christ when he said that it was necessary in order to fulfill all righteousness (3.15)—a phrase which I believe equates to “doing God’s will.” But as is always the case with Christ, His actions have implications that run deep. And in the case of His baptism, I agree with G. Campbell Morgan that what it implied was an act of “identification . . . by which He consented to take His place among sinners” (The Crisis of the Christ, 120). Wasn’t such predicted of Him? Didn’t Isaiah speak of One who would save sinners (53.11) by being numbered among the transgressors (53.12)? I know the New Testament applies this prediction to Christ’s death (Mark 15.28), but it sure looks to me like Jesus was being counted among sinners in Matthew 3. I don’t think it’s off-base here to see His burial (in baptism) at the start of His ministry, as presaging the burial at the end of His ministry that would be the means whereby He accomplished His mission of saving His people from their sins (1.21; if you want to see what it means to identify with another from a purely human perspective, read the prayers in Daniel 9.4–19 and Ezra 9.1–15).

That the sinless Christ would deliberately identify with sinners is utterly consistent with God’s love for us (John 3.16). Love cannot be love and remain aloof from a loved one’s plight. Love cannot be love and ignore a loved one’s need. When the love of God came into contact with sin in us—whom He loves—love set up a cross. It was inevitable. Love will always seek to save a loved one lost—whatever that lostness may be.

Not long ago I saw the movie The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, based on the novel by John Boyne. It’s the fictional story of Bruno, the young son of the Nazi commandant of Auschwitz, who befriends Shmuel, a Jewish boy about his age, who is inside the camp. They had spotted each other through a secluded part of the wire, and every day they met and eventually become such friends that Bruno decides to dig under the wire, dress in striped pajamas (prison garb), and help Shmuel look for his father who has gone missing. Once inside, however, the boys are caught in a group of Jews being herded into a gas chamber. There, in the dark and in the chaos, “Bruno found that he was still holding to Shmuel’s hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.”

In Christ’s baptism what I see above all is an act of love wherein He put on our striped pajamas (being made in all things like us, Heb. 2.11–17, 2 Cor. 5.21) and came to our side of the fence to deal with our problem. Even when this decision became a hell on earth for Him, His love was such that nothing in the world could persuade Him to let go.

Now, the Bible doesn’t normally handle the problem of evil by offering us a theodicy. More commonly, it calls for trust when we are confronted with evil. It asks us to believe that God knows what He is doing, even when it seems He doesn’t know what He’s doing. There are some passages, however, where we are given insights into the problem of evil that might be classified as a theodicy. And one of these is 2 Thessalonians 1.4–5.*

Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. (NIV)

Paul asserts that a consequence of the Thessalonians’ suffering (persecution and trials) is that they would be counted worthy of God’s kingdom. J. B. Phillips’ translation says it this way: “Without doubt [God] intends to use your suffering to make you worthy of his kingdom.”

Paul’s proposition, then, is that suffering is a means to a worthy end; that in suffering there is an alchemy whereby the base metals of persecution and tribulation work to produce a character fit for the kingdom of heaven. It is immanently possible, therefore, that very good things can result from very bad things.

It’s a thought that rings true, for it is universally recognized that certain noble and righteous characteristics are only shaped in the forge of adversity. Whenever someone, for instance, determines to be an Olympic athlete, or a Green Beret, or a surgeon, they have chosen a course marked by blood, sweat, and tears. It is often the case that worthy goals are reached only by the path of agony. It is inexcusably naïve to think that slogans such as “be all that you can be,” or “we’re looking for a few good men,” imply a life of ease.

In Scripture we read that a thorn in the flesh can produce humility (2 Corinthians 12.7), and that hardships can produce patience (James 1.3), and that fire increases the value of faith (1 Peter 1.7). And we also read that a Son learned obedience and became the perfect sacrifice by the things which He suffered (Hebrews 5.8-9).

And in all this is found a key Biblical theodicy. Scripture never says evil is good in itself, but it does insist that evil can be purged and redeemed. To quote Dorothy Sayers, “God did not abolish the fact of evil. He transformed it. He did not stop the crucifixion: He rose from the dead” (A Matter of Eternity, 1973, 54).

“In all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8.28, NIV). If you want a theodicy, you can do not better than this. It’s the theodicy in which Christianity specializes.

*2 Thessalonians 1.5 uses the two Greek words Liebniz combined to make theodicy: theos (God) + dikaios (righteous).

Though it may not be readily apparent after a cursory reading, each of these three incidents—found in 2 Kings 6—share two elements in common: they each involved a lost cause and an unbelievable ending. And there is, I think, something significant in this commonality, for from these stories we can learn something valuable about hope.

Hopelessness is a devastating thing. It comes when we harbor negative expectations about the future. It comes when we believe that no relief or remedy is forthcoming for our problem. Not only does hopelessness fill us with numbing despair and futility, but it poisons us with bitterness by convincing us we have been cheated out of a good life. The mental, emotional, and physiological symptoms of this villain are well known, ranging all the way from clinical depression to premature death. The pain it inflicts crushes the soul (Proverbs 18.14). And when one falls victim to its ruin, the only hope for that soul is to regain hope.

So how does 2 Kings 6 fit into all this?

Here’s how: can you think of three more hopeless situations than the ones in this text? If you’ve ever dropped something into a river or lake (6.5), you know that most likely it’s gone for good. And victories are simply not won by single, unarmed men surrounded on all sides by an overwhelming military force (6.7). And blockaded cities, whose resources are exhausted, capitulate; they do not conquer (6.25-29). Hopeless situations, all.

But keep reading. Contrary to all expectations the ax head floated (6.6); and the prophet, Sergeant York-style, led his capturers captive (6.10); and the city on the verge of collapse suddenly had more food than it knew what to do with (7.1,18). Contextually, these stories speak of Israel’s plight and the power available to the nation if it would trust in God. But these events, meant to fortify Israel, can encourage us—for they are shot through with the resurrection motif. Because there is a God “who can make the dead live” (Romans 4.17, Phillips), there is always a basis for hope, even when things seem hopeless (Romans 4.18).

So long as you’re not in hell, there’s hope; but we need to be clear on the nature of the Christian hope. It is no crime to want (hope for) good things in this life (a better marriage, a mended body, the return of a prodigal, the means to pay a debt, etc.), but the locus of Christian hope is heaven, not earth (Colossians 1.5, Titus 1.2). Because of heaven, “there is no such thing as a Christian tragedy” (Dorothy Sayers). Because of heaven, life may knock us down, but it will not knock us out (2 Corinthians 4.9). Because of heaven, there will be a happy ending at last.

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists onlym in earthquake and eclipse. . . . For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

G. K. Chesterton, Heretics (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2000), 82.

I’m not surprised that 2 Kings 6 offers hope, for such is an intended aim of the Old Testament (Romans 15.4). Continue to think about the ax, and the prophet, and the city. And as you do, may it be so that “the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing” (Romans 15.13).

As I outline it, the prologue to Matthew’s Gospel (1.1–4.16) falls into two parts (1.1–2.23, 3.1–4.16), which are separated by a nearly 30-year gap. Characteristic of the prologue is Matthew’s use of certain signals to introduce his themes. Sometimes the signal is the repetition of a word or formula (e.g., 1.22; 2.15, 17, 23; 4.14), sometimes it’s an inclusive phrase or idea (1.1/20.19; 1.23/28.20), and sometimes it’s the inclusion of an oddity. (These, in fact, abound in the prologue. The expression “son of Abraham” [1.1], the appearance of women in the genealogy [1.3– 6], the three-fourteen genealogical outline [1.17], etc. are conspicuous by their irregularity and cry out for careful attention.) Note that despite the chronological space between the two sections of the prologue, they are similar in that each recounts a Divine action followed by a diabolical assault: Christ’s birth (ch. 1) occasions an attempted assassination (ch. 2), and His baptism (ch. 3) elicits an unavailing temptation (ch. 4).

It is in the second section of the prologue that we encounter Christ’s first words in the First Gospel. It seems prima facie to me that His opening statement would be momentous—and I believe it is—but a glance at the commentaries yields little consensus as to what is meant by, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (3.15). So how are we to cut through the seeming ambiguity of this statement to an interpretation? What did the Lord mean by His response to John the Baptist’s reluctance to baptize Him? When I try to figure out the answer to these questions, here are a couple of things I look at.

Contextually, the nature of the prologue suggests (to me) that whatever Christ’s statement meant, Matthew included it because it introduces an important Christological theme.

Specifically, the word righteousness seems to be the key to understanding the theme being introduced. Righteousness is an important word in Matthew (especially in the Sermon on the Mount) and throughout the New Testament. It commonly refers to either: conduct in keeping with God’s will—doing that which is pleasing to God; or (ii) the righteous status God graciously bestows on sinners. Since Christ was sinless and did not need to have righteousness reckoned to Him (I think it was John’s sense of this fact that was behind his objection in 3.14), I go with the first of the above possible meanings (above) that should be assigned to righteousness in 3.15.

To fulfill the stipulations of righteousness in this passage, therefore, means to do God’s will. And this, above all else, defined the Christ. Before leaving heaven, Christ committed Himself to the course of obedience: “I come to do thy will, O God” (Psalm 40.7–8, Hebrews 10.7–9). And once on earth, He followed through, even when it meant being baptized by a lesser in an act designed for sinners (3.13–16), or standing alone against the tempter (4.1–11), or submitting to the travesty of all travesties (26.36– 27.50). A key theme in Matthew—and in each Gospel—is our Lord’s obedience to His Father’s will. He always did those things that pleased God (John 8.29).

Fulfilling all righteousness does introduce a singular theme in Matthew’s Gospel. If being a Christian means to be a follower of Christ, then Christians should walk the path of obedience— the path walked by our Lord—in every situation in which they find themselves (28.20). It is this theme that Peter (e.g., 1 Peter 2.18–25) and John (e.g., 1 John 2.3–6) would later on make a keynote of their epistles. Seeing Christ’s commitment to obedience, didn’t Tozer have it right when he said, “The true follower of Christ will not ask, ‘If I embrace this truth, w hat will it cost me?’ Rather, he will say, ‘This is truth. God help me to walk in it, let come what may!’”?

I love these words, but I think some of their beauty has been lost in translation. In the Hebrew text this passage is bracketed by the word remember, and is balanced, first, by David’s appeal for God’s mercy, followed by the admission of his own perversity. A layman’s translation would go something like this: “Remember, O Lord, your great mercy and love . . . and the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways do not remember.” Herewith, two observations.

First, David wants the Lord to forget what he has done. The sins of his youth likely refers to wildoats he sowed early on. No matter how sinful such sins may have been, most folks are willing to give us a pass on youthful sins, because it’s likely they engaged in their own fair share of foolishness while growing up. Transgressions, however, doesn’t speak of sophomoric misbehavior, but of deliberate, willful transgression. David is confessing that he intentionally did things he knew he shouldn’t have done. And whether it be his youthful sins or his raw rebellion, David wanted the Lord to forget that he had been guilty of either.

Second, David wants the Lord to remember who He is. The Hebrew word rendered loving kindness is most often translated in the Old Testament simply as mercy. The word translated tender mercies (racham)—while closely related to the word for loving kindness—has an  especiallyinteresting etymology. Check any good lexicon and you’ll discover it is a cognate of the Hebrew word for womb. With the passing of time it came to mean a mother’s love, a mother’s compassion, a mother’s tenderness.

One of my earliest memories is of being on the front porch with Mom while she was doing a load of clothes in a ringer washer—you know, the kind where wet clothes are squeegeed through hard rubber rollers before being hung to dry. For some reason she needed to step inside for a minute, but before doing so she warned me to keep my fingers away from the rollers. As soon as she was out of sight, however, my stupidity got the best of me. I ignored her warning and decided to find out for myself what happens when you send your fingers through the ringers. In an instant I was screaming like a banshee. And then Mom appeared, unplugging the washer, and backing my hand out of the rollers.

Mom didn’t scold me, nor did she spank me for disobeying her. And she didn’t even say something like, “You’ve made your bed, now you’ll have to lie in it.” Instead, she took me inside, held me on her lap, and rocked me until the hurting stopped. You just don’t forget tenderness like that.

When David prays, in essence, that God forget his sins and remember His (God’s) motherly mercies, I know what he means. When our sins put us through the ringer, does anything speak of amazing grace more than words like these from our Father: “As a mother comforts her son, so will I myself comfort you” (Isaiah 66.13, NEB)?

Psalm 25 is the first of the seven acrostic or alphabetical Psalms (wherein the first word of each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet). The other alphabet psalms are 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, 145. Some students of the psalms also categorize Psalm 25 as one of the penitential psalms.