The Grand Budapest Hotel

You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization in this barbaric slaughterhouse we know as humanity.

Needing Help

What wine-stained carpet can blot itself clean?
What contaminated water can purify itself of disease?
What broken bones can set themselves to dancing?
What lips sewn shut can tear their own sutures to rejoin the song?
What diseased heart can transplant itself?

David knows the gravity of the problem. This is not do better and try harder. This is a desperate cry for salvation, a salvation that can only come from outside himself.

have mercy on me
blot out my transgression
wash me thoroughly
cleanse me
purge me clean
wash me white
let me hear joy and gladness
let my broken bones rejoice
blot out all of my iniquities
give me a clean heart
renew a right spirit in me
cast me not away
restore the joy of your salvation
uphold me
deliver me from my guilt
open my lips

Psalm 51

Hiding

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
    whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
    and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away
    through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
    my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. 

I acknowledged my sin to you,
    and I did not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
    and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. 

You are a hiding place for me;
    you preserve me from trouble;
    you surround me with shouts of deliverance. 

Psalm 32

As much as sin is woven into the fabric of our nature, so is hiding.

Man and Woman ate a fruit and all of a sudden felt this strange feeling inside of them, an inescapable impulse to run and hide. The One who made them and placed them in the garden comes looking and calling, and they're huddled in fear and shame behind a tree he had planted.

We hide. It's doesn't always look as pathetic as hiding behind a tree. Sometimes it's sophisticated. Sometimes it looks plain good. We avoid, we cover up, we dodge, we manipulate, we twist, we keep distance, we rationalize, we make excuses, we accentuate the positive, we busy ourselves. Whatever it is, we're hiding.

And all the while the weight pushes in, the pressure builds. Is it getting hot in here? Because we're exhausted from the heat. In place of rightful confession comes only uncontainable groans. Like the storm that just kept raging with Jonah in the boat, things only get worse and worse.

And there's only one way out.

As the psalmist says, I acknowledge my sin, I quit covering it up, I confess, and he forgives.

That's where a most wonderful thing happens. A weight is lifted, a relationships is restored, and the one we were hiding from all along becomes himself the safest place in which to hide. The one we ran from becomes the one we run to. When we run to him for hiding, he preserves and he delivers.

You are a hiding place for me.