Stop Covering Sin - Your Nightly Prayer
Stop Covering Sin
Your Nightly Prayer for May 7, 2025
by Kyle Norman
TONIGHT’S SCRIPTURE
“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” - Psalm 32:1
SOMETHING TO PONDER
When I was studying for my Doctorate, all students were required to spend two weeks in residency each year. All the students of the program would descend upon the university and take classes in person. During my first residency, each day began the same way. The students would go downstairs for breakfast in the cafeteria. Breakfast, each day, every day, was always the same; it was a dish which we affectionately termed “The Egg Brick.” It was an attempt at being a frittata, but it was anything but. The egg brick was eggs and cheese, mixed with whatever the caterers seemed to have on hand, and then baked until it had a rubbery consistency. During this two-week egg-brick journey, I learned a valuable truth – a truth I keep with me today: Hot-Sauce covers up a multitude of sins.
I say that, but it’s not actually true, is it? We all knew we were eating an egg brick. We were fooling ourselves, thinking that hot sauce made the egg brick different. Covering up the dish with hot sauce didn’t change anything.
In Psalm 32, David talks about the difference between covering up our sins as opposed to having them covered. Covering up our sins, he says, is just to mask them, it is to pretend that they are not there. David describes how covering up his iniquity, masking it, didn’t affect anything in his soul. He still felt disconnected from God, he still felt as if there was a barrier between him and the Lord. This played havoc on his inner life. Thus, David describes how his bones wasted away, through my groaning all day long, and how his inner strength and vitality felt strained and sapped (Psalm 32:4)
Covering up our sins is nothing more than trying to clean our room by shoving everything under the rug. We pretend we don’t see it. But the mess remains and keeps us away from God. Think of Adam and Eve covering up their nakedness with fig leaves. Did the leaves hide the guilt of their soul?
This Psalm, however, is not a lament. Psalm 32 is a psalm of hope – it is a psalm where David articulates the reality of forgiveness. He begins, “Blessed is the one who is forgiven their iniquity, whose sin is covered.” There is a big difference between covering up our sins and having them covered by the grace of Jesus. The word covered in the Hebrew here means “to put away, or to deal finally with”. It means that all the longing within, that inward sapping reality, the spiritual need we kept masking by other things, all these things finally get addressed, not just glossed over. To have our sins covered is to have our sins fully and finally removed from us.
When we allow ourselves to be covered by the love of God, to have God’s love be the defining marker of our life, we no longer feel the need to hide from God. Scripture talks about how those who follow Christ are covered by the sprinkled blood of Jesus. Christ’s death on the cross is the definitive and ultimate place of forgiveness; it is the place where our sin is covered by a divine power that renders it all null and void.
Freedom and salvation aren’t found in covering up our sins, but in allowing them to be covered by the loving grace of God.
YOUR NIGHTLY PRAYER
Jesus,
I thank you for your sacrifice on the cross, and for the grace that covers me. I thank you that it is by your cross alone that I can be assured of the forgiveness of my sin, my acceptance as your child, and my place in your Kingdom. I confess the ways in which I continue to step away from your loving presence, and in response, I turn again to you. May your love continue to enfold me, surround me, hide me, and cover me. This I pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
THREE THINGS TO MEDITATE UPON
1. St. Augustin had Psalm 32 placed opposite his bed so that he could meditate on it frequently. Take some time and pray through Psalm 32. What assuring statement most speaks to you?
2. When we feel overwhelmed by sin, it can be easy to feel that we need to hide from God. David, however, talks about hiding in God. What might it mean for you to hide in God, allowing God’s presence to surround you and preserve you from trouble?
3. David describes the feeling that the hand of God pressed heavily upon him day and night. This wasn’t a feeling of vengeance and wrath, but a feeling of God’s loving invitation to return. Where is God inviting you to experience God’s loving presence more in your life?
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Kinga Howard
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