Psalms 130:1-8: in context

Out of the depths I cry to you, this psalm begins, from the lowest place a voice reaching up. And it names the thing that would sink anyone: if you, LORD, kept a record of sins, who could stand? No one. But then the turn that changes everything: but there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared. And the psalmist waits, he says, for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Two truths hold this psalm together. First, if God kept a strict ledger of our sins, not one of us could stand before him; the honest look at our own record ends in the depths. Second, and this is the hinge, there is forgiveness with him. Not leniency that shrugs at sin, but forgiveness that deals with it, and, strikingly, this forgiveness is what produces reverence: there is forgiveness with you, therefore you are feared. We might expect that being let off would breed carelessness; instead, being truly forgiven breeds awe. And so the soul waits for God the way a night watchman aches for the dawn, sure that morning, and mercy, will come.

Is my hope grounded in God's forgiveness rather than my record, and do I wait for him, and for his mercy, the way a watchman longs for the morning?