Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 111 · April 21
Ashamed to Lift My Face
“And said, O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens.”
Most of us are good at confessing other people's sins, and we often do it in the plural so that it sounds humble.
Ezra had come to Jerusalem from Babylon when the leaders brought him a report that the people, priests and Levites among them, had broken God's commands. The sin was not Ezra's, and he had not been in the land while it was happening. Yet he writes, "when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied." Astonied is an old word for stunned. He sat there until the evening sacrifice before he said a word. Then he fell on his knees, spread out his hands to God, and prayed: "O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens."
Notice the word "our." Ezra speaks of his own shame, and he never once calls the sin theirs: all through the prayer it is "our iniquities" and "our trespass." Isaiah does the same thing when he sees the Lord on His throne, where he could have spoken only for himself: "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." Nehemiah is even more specific: "both I and my father's house have sinned." None of these three men found a way to pray that let them stand outside the people they were praying for.
We have found one. We use the same word "our" to do the opposite work. We talk about our church, our generation and the state we are all in, but everyone listening can tell we are reporting on others and not counting ourselves in. Ezra's "our" cost him grief that left him pulling out his own beard. Ours often costs nothing.
While he is still on his knees, Ezra names what he is hoping in: "And now for a little space grace hath been shewed from the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant to escape." He also says that "thou our God hast punished us less than our iniquities deserve." That truth is older than his prayer and steadier than his shame, and it still holds for you when you confess your own sin honestly: "He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 111 is Rich in Faith (James 2:5).