It’s hard to know sometimes whether I’ve forsaken my sins or some of them have forsaken me. That’s using sin in the popular Western sense, not the etymological sense., for I surely do still miss the mark. Only now I miss it in subtler, and maybe spiritually deadlier, ways.
The author of this psalm, like me, was no longer a youth, and like me, his shortcomings had changed:
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Thy grace endured the sins of my youth, which were great in number. May it endure also my indiscretion, heedlessness and carelessness.
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St. Ephraim the Syrian, A Spiritual Psalter, Psalm 59 (“Because of my tears, convert me.”)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 