It’s by no means an ivory-tower theological question. It’s as real as the weight we’ve lost from the stress of our divorce. As real as the bottle of antidepressants on our nightstand. We believe in him. We love him. But every voice inside us and every shred of evidence outside us points to his abandonment of us in our hour of deepest need.

In the tiny Bible-belt town where I grew up, tragedy brought people together.

The commonly accepted wisdom is that we feel guilt over what we’ve done and we experience shame over who we are. If guilt is the blemish on our face then shame is the cancer in our heart. It’s deeper, harder to dig out.

For since it was not enough that the Lord of heaven and earth hung on our every word, the Word came down from heaven and hung upon the cross.

God in Jesus takes off your shirt of shame, your bitterness, your anger, your guilt, your hopelessness, and drapes these rags on himself.

Inside our heads is a courtroom where our whole lives are put on trial. And we are declared guilty of things. Big things, little things. God things, human things. True things, false things. We never can measure up.

Hear that confession of saving faith? Rahab may have been a prostitute in Jericho, but she was secretly a virgin daughter of Yahweh.

He holds you tight and loves you even as you weep and fight in his arms. His Son suffers alongside you as your brother in the flesh.

What we see in the face of this God is not a loathing expression. We find the face of a compassionate man who knew all about shame himself.

When you see a cross, you see the smile of your Father. He’s not mad at you. He’s overjoyed that you’re his daughter.

As with so many things, regret can begin as something natural, even beneficial, as you struggle to recover from a wound in your past. But over time, regret can devolve from a sadness to a sickness.

Rather than praying a lie by pretending all is well, this psalm places upon our lips a truthful plea. A godly complaint. These are God’s words, given as gifts to you, by which you can speak back to him.