From East to West

Several weeks ago as I traveled to work, a giant luminous full moon shone ahead of me in the western sky. Behind me I glimpsed the eastern sky which glowed with incandescent rose and heather-colored clouds as a pale sun peeked up from the horizon. I pondered how I was bookended by two points of the compass, the same two points the psalmist uses in Psalm 103:12: “as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”

In theory, east and west will always be separate; you cannot travel so far west that you are traveling east or vice-versa. So the psalmist is explaining that God in His mercy has taken our sins and their penalties so far away from us that we can never run into them again. In verse 11, the psalmist tells us it is God’s inexhaustible love which motivates this action: “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.”

When we revere God, truly worship Him, and accept His atoning sacrifice, He rewards us with a love so full of mercy, grace, and compassion that we can hardly fathom it. The next time you feel the weight of sins you’ve already confessed and repented of, remember these verses from the Psalms as well as the words of the prophet Isaiah: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25)