Reading: “For thy name’s sake, O LORD, pardon mine iniquity; for it is great.”—Psalm 25:11

O God, I bless You that You have permitted me to lie down in sleep, and to awake this morning in safety. You have dispersed the darkness of another night—may no shadow of sin obscure the sunshine of Your favor and love. May the returning light of day be to me the type and emblem of that better radiance with which you visit the souls of Your people, when they are enabled, in Jesus, to behold a pardoning God seated on a throne of reconciliation and grace.

I come to You, acknowledging my transgressions in all their heinousness. Warnings have been abused, providences slighted, grace resisted, Your Spirit grieved. It is of the Lord’s mercies I am not consumed—that You have not long before now consigned me, with all this load of unpardoned guilt, to that place where pardon is unknown.

But I do rejoice to know that “there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared”—that I can bring my great sins to a great Saviour. May I be enabled to feel that this all-glorious name of a reconciled God in Christ is “a strong tower,” into which I may “run, and be safe.” Give me grace, in self-renouncing lowliness, to disown every other ground of confidence or hope of mercy; and to cast myself, a broken-hearted, humbled penitent, at the feet of Him on whom was laid the burden of all my transgressions. May mine henceforth be the blessedness of those “whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.” And all I ask is for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Adapted from the Rev. John McDuff, D.D., The Morning Watches, 1852.