August 12

Psalm 32
One of the many things about the Catholic Church that I love (don't look shocked, I know it sounds like I despise all things about them but I don't), is confession. We don't have the Confessional Booth in the Presbyterian Church but I can tell you, we need one.
Unconfessed sins weigh thousands of pounds. I pull mine behind me like a half-full cotton tote sack. One of the few memorable sermons by my childhood preacher Bill Newton was about laying your tote sack down at the feet of Jesus. Great image, but not one I practice.
Psalm 32 talks exactly about this practice of withholding the sins from God. The psalmist says 'my bones wasted away'.
Until recently, the accepted view on ulcers was that stress and highly spiced foods caused massive secretions of stomach acid which caused the bleeding ulcers. Now, the prevailing diagnosis is a virus. But is is certainly true that stress and unhappiness cause upset stomachs, heartburn, diarrhea and yes, wasting away or in my case, bulking up.
Why confess? If God is all-knowing, why do we have to tell him when we have sinned? Surely, he already knows.
Psalm 32 has an answer for that. Confession is the method by which we learn 'direction'. 'Horses and mules have no understanding.' In order to understand which ways we are to go (The Lord's way, hopefully), we must admit that what we did in the past was wrong and ask to be forgiven. God does forgive and we (hopefully) learn to do better.
So why do we need a Confessional booth? Like so many things, I think it comes down to ritual and routine. In order to take communion in the Catholic Church (assuming you are Catholic), you first must confess. You come into a quiet space, you acknowledge your guilt, sometimes receive a penance (this is for us, my Catholic friends tell me. Not for God. *We* need to do the prayers or the redemptive parts) and then you can receive Christ in the form of communion.
One of my girl friends who is Catholic says that the Confessional booth of her childhood had a distinct smell to it and when she smells that smell, she immediately feels guilty and thinks she needs to drop to her knees and do several Hail Marys. But even the smell (in her case, paste wax) is probably calculated.

But I am not Catholic and I don't have access to a booth. What I do have access to is God through prayer. I think I need to spend a little more time saying what I have done wrong and a whole lot less time asking for things.
And Psalm 32 has an answer for that as well.
'Many are the woes of the wicked, but the Lord's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him.'

Grace and Peace to each of you.