Jonathan Parnell offers a moving pastoral reflection on Psalm 51. The key to this prayer is that it is addressed to a God who is outside of us, radically other than us, but communicates himself to us by his saving presence. Parnell is after the “lived sense” of this reality. He invites us to appeal to this God for mercy, to thirst for our joyful experience of his presence. The oceans of God’s mercy are more satisfying than the splash pads of self-justification.

Matthew LaPine, pastor of Theological Development, Lecturer, Salt Network School of Theology