Monday, May 18, 2026
Remember Your mercy, O Lord, and Your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to Your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of Your goodness, O Lord! (Psalm 25:6-7)
Problems with memory may certainly be a factor in aging, but such issues are not limited by age. Anyone old enough to drive may at some point start the morning with a frantic search for misplaced car keys. You may have had the experience of walking into a room, only to forget what you were going to do once you arrived there. There is one aspect of life in which we rarely, if ever, have memory issues. We usually have no trouble at all remembering our sins. Memories of past transgressions easily flood our hearts and minds, even when we try very hard to forget them.
Our psalm is a prayer that pleads with God to develop memory issues of His own: “Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions.” We ask God to remember us, not with regard to our sins, but according to His mercy and steadfast love. We pray that He would look on us for the sake of His goodness, instead of remembering our evil. It is a prayer He has already answered. Shortly before His death, Jesus said, “For this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify Your Name.” The Father answered from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again” (John 12:27b-28). On the day we call Good Friday, God glorified His Name. Through faith in our risen Lord, we see God’s glory and goodness, His mercy and steadfast love, shining through the cross of Jesus. God dealt with our sins by condemning and canceling those sins in the body of His own Son.
Moved by the Holy Spirit, we repent of our sins and for the sake of His goodness in Christ, God regards us with mercy and steadfast love. He forgives our sins and those sins are removed forever from His sight and memory. Jesus “was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Through His death on the cross, Jesus atoned for our sins. Our guilt has been erased. Moved by the Spirit to honest repentance, we learn from the wrong we have done, but confident in the gracious forgetfulness of God, we do not need to cling to the memory of our sins. Instead of trying to follow self-help advice and striving endlessly (and in vain) to “forgive ourselves,” we look to the cross of Jesus. That is where forgiveness is found, not within ourselves and our troubled memories, but in the goodness, mercy, and steadfast love of God.
WE PRAY: Forgive my sins, dear Savior, and remember me in mercy and steadfast love. Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Carol Geisler.
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