A new, faithful spirit to go with a shorter beard? #CEBTour

"Create a clean heart for me, God; put a new, faithful spirit deep inside me!"

Psalm 51;10, CEB

Oh, if only our sins, our worries, our fears, our prejudices, etc., could all be trimmed as easily as a forty-day growth of beard hair! Trimming the Lenten beard was a matter of about a half hour with clippers (I also cut my hair.) Bingo, all that extra hair ended up in the trash can, and I'm a new man...on the outside. Extra growth (of the bad sort) on the inside may not be quite as simple.

As the psalmist asks, may God put a new, faithful spirit deep inside of me. Or as the text I grew up with said, "Renew a right spirit within me." I like that idea of renewal, and I like the CEB's rendering of God putting a new, faithful spirit "deep inside of me." Fortunately, we read these words in the New Testament:

"So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!" 2nd Corinthians, 5:17, CEB

May it be so. Amen.