As Far As the East is From the West.

 

(Published May 27 2026)

When I read Psalm 103:12, I tend to picture a map in my head.

"As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us."

My brain has to visually process this. It takes the globe, flattens it onto a page, and I point at Japan, point at the coast of California, and measure the space in between. It's a big distance. Thousands of miles. An awful lot of walking!

And the verse feels generous. God has put my sin a long way away.

But David didn't name two places. He could have. He could have written "as far as Egypt is from Babylon" or "from Jerusalem to the end of the sea." That would have been a big distance.

He didn't. He chose east and west. And east and west aren't places. They're directions.

If you started walking east right now, and you could walk through oceans and across continents and never stop, you would still be walking east when you died.

And if someone took over from you, they'd still be walking east a thousand years later. East has no furthest point. You can never reach it.

Those are the words David chose.

Which means it's not a long distance. It's an infinite one. Uncloseable. A direction with no end.

It's easy to read this verse and hear "God has put your sin quite far from you." Big, yes. Measurable, though. Like it was a finite number, he could have given a bigger answer to.

But David didn't write a measurement.

David was a poet. He knew the difference between the distance from Cairo to Babylon and the direction called east. He picked the one you can't walk to on purpose.

If your sin is a finite distance away, there is a road back to it. You can retrace the miles. You can go and fetch the thing you confessed last week.

But if it's been moved in a direction with no end, there is no road. There is no going back. The place where your sin used to be does not exist. He has not hidden it cleverly. He has put it somewhere that cannot be reached.

Most of us spend years trying to walk east to get to our old selves. Years replaying the confession. God has already given us the answer. It's not over the hill. It is as far away as a direction that never arrives.

This morning, let that actually land. Not "far." Infinite. He didn't move it a bit out of reach. He moved it out of reach entirely.

P.S. I write these devotionals every weekday and email them out along with a prayer and journaling prompts. You can sign up to receive them free through the link in the comments.