Procreation, Forgiveness, and Fear

As a side note, I apologize for taking so long to blog. I'm going to ask your forbearance for the next nine months, though, as this pregnancy exhaustion is hitting me hard early on. I'll try to stay constant, but be aware that my health is (obviously) foremost.

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I was meditating on the forgiveness of God, and this verse caught me as something odd at first.

"But with you there is forgiveness,
Therefore you are feared." Psalm 130:4

It brought me up short. The initial question is why should forgiveness be feared? Shouldn't forgiveness be sought? Be wanted? Shouldn't we be grateful for God's forgiveness? Forgiveness might be feared because:

It offends our pride?
It humbles us?
It's hard to accept?
We feel we need to pay it back?
In accepting forgiveness, we grant God power over us?
We don't like to rely on another?

And then we're back to the pride issue. Maybe forgiveness from God should be feared because it offends our flesh. Any encounter with God naturally humbles us and completely smashes our sense of self and importance. And when we receive God's forgiveness, it's even more so humbling because we know we don't deserve it.

So let's be thankful that we have a God who forgives, even if it humbles us.