Psalm 23 -- A Bar Keeper's Friend
A good friend sent me a PowerPoint presentation on Psalm 23 some years back. It was missing the music, but I decided to watch it anyway. In silence, I patiently followed the slides as the words of Psalm 23 faded in and out. Several slides in, the words, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life..." popped up on the screen. I was immediately struck in a new way by the phrase, "goodness and mercy will follow me." I realized a nuance to this passage that I had never seen. I saw that the beauty here is not solely about being blessed by God's goodness and mercy.
The nuance is that God's goodness and mercy follow our steps—as if to cover up all our missteps. All of my crap—my sin, pride, and lack of compassion—which show up too often in my frail footsteps, are covered by Christ. God's never-ending mercy and grace wash away and redeem every single wrong trail I (or you) go down, every muddy footprint on the kitchen floor, and every single step in the wrong direction. His goodness and mercy come behind me (i.e., follow me) and He cleans up my messes.
This makes me think of the many long & wrong trails I've gone down in my life and the ways in which God quietly follows me with a spiritual Scotch-Brite pad. I think of it every time I clean the stove or the pots in the kitchen. I always break out a canister of "Bar Keepers Friend.” And now, here I sit at the kitchen counter wondering how many times God, in his goodness and mercy, has followed me as I try to follow Him. I wonder how many countless times I could have turned around to see him scrubbing and cleaning and saying, "I sure do love you. . .no matter what." Then I realize that the fact is that the Cross covers and cleans up all messes.
The hard part is trying not to clean it all up ourselves out of the fear that someone might see we don’t have it all together. It’s hard for me — until I remember to surrender to the One who says, “I’ve got you covered.”
God follows us as we follow Him. What a marvelous reality.
