Formation as Surrender (Psalm 51)

Because self-denial sits near the center of the Christian life, formation begins to look less like building something new and more like the slow work of being emptied out. Growth is not always a question of effort, but of duration. It isn’t a question of achievement, but of surrender.

But what does it mean to surrender—to place ourselves in the hands of the one who is, as Scripture says, the author and perfecter of our faith? It is easier said than done. Our egos hold more sway than we want to admit. It often feels easier to justify, manage, and rationalize than to lay our lives down. But eventually—if we are lucky and blessed—self-justification collapses and surrender can begin.

What if we need to loosen our grip rather than tighten it? What if God has been waiting for us to find our weakened, broken selves? What if the life we receive is better than the one we are trying to hold together? As St. Francis is often paraphrased, “God is always trying to give us good things, but our hands are too full to receive them.”

Keep those thoughts in mind as you listen to the rendition of psalm 51 from the darkling psalter.

Psalm 51—If your love is as true as you say, forget the rest.

Lord, relent. I regret
My summer palaces; the violence
I mistook for virtue; the days
I was always elsewhere; the years
I flung down the fidelities
I should have followed home.

If your love is as true as you say,
Forget the rest.

My failures are always with me. 
They are more than I can stand.
I buried them in the garden,
But they only bloomed black roses
That everyone could see.
Grief pools wherever I sit.
It has been years since
I saw a mirror I recognized.

But you, God, are blameless. 
You are never wrong. You never miss.
Your justice hits home.
I can’t stand it. 
I go wrong seven times a day. 
I don’t want to live on the lam,
But fugitive days unroll 
Under my feet nonetheless.
If you are hiding some remedy,
Share it out. If you know the truth,
And have any patience left,
Show me what it looks like
When love takes flesh 
And tarries with us.

Wash me and I
Will be whiter than snow.
I’ll be free. I’ll sing. I’ll bring
All the bones you’ve broken
Back to you to set in place, in peace.
Overthrow my dense, knotted
Conundrum of folly.
Collect each empty renunciation
And count it good.
Don’t leave me to the years I lost.
Hold me by the hand
And walk me somewhere else.

Then, my old loves will return,
Like birds to eat from my hands:
My gentleness, my quiet, the stillness
I spent so long running from.
Then, you’ll dance me down to bones
And raise me back again.
I won’t have to beat my failures, 
Only see them for what they are.
Repentance will run like quicksilver
Over everything I touch.

I tried to bargain with you 
But what you wanted was a broken heart,
So I laid my whole self on the altar
Like it was my bed,
And didn’t think of rising
With my lies intact.

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Growth doesn’t always feel like growth; sometimes it feels like falling apart. Sometimes God brings us to a place where our effort runs out and we can only ask for help.

Doubts begin to rise. The things we once felt certain about don’t necessarily change—but our confidence in them does. As C. S. Lewis once said, “If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards.” In the same way, God sometimes comes to us as a deconstructor—taking things down before building something else in their place.

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Throughout the Bible, people are described with botanical imagery—especially as trees. The human story begins in a garden with two trees: one leading to life, the other to death. Humanity is invited to the first, but chooses the second.

Psalm 1 brings us back into that garden and sets the choice before us again. There are still two ways to live. But now the invitation has deepened. We are not only called to eat from the tree of life—we are called to become it. As the translation of the first Psalm says:

“Like a tree planted by streams of water…”

The tree in this metaphor is you. Here, human life becomes the place where God’s life grows and takes shape. As the word of God works in us over time, something steady and organic begins to take shape—“ring on ring,” as God’s years mark their slow loops in us.

So, the journey of growth begins with being rooted in the right places. Then, as we live, God’s fruit grows in us.

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This episode marks the beginning of a seven-day guided journey through the Darkling Psalter, exploring the slow work of growth and formation.

Spiritual formation does not move in straight lines. It is not a program to complete or a set of steps to master. It is a process—unhasting, yet unresting—by which God shapes a life over time.

It is painful and joyous, and longer than we expect. It is a journey of surrender, rest, and trust, as much as it is one of labor, perseverance, and dying to self.

These episodes are offered as one small means God may use in that work—inviting reflection through the psalm renditions found in the Darkling Psalter.

This series unfolds across seven themes of formation: rootedness, deconstruction, surrender, trust, self-denial, reorientation, and, finally, praise. Each episode includes a psalm rendition, a brief word of context, prompts for reflection, and a closing prayer.

May these lines from Psalm 1 become true for you:

“… I will layer ring on ring
As God’s years mark loops in me.
I’ll listen for the whisper of psalms,
And begin what there is to begin.”

Begin with the first episode: Formation as Rootedness