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Out of the Depths

 Out of the depths I have cried to You, Lord. Lord, hear my voice!

Let Your ears be attentive to the sound of my pleadings.

 If You, Lord, were to keep account of guilty deeds, Lord, who could stand?
But there is forgiveness with You, so that You may be revered.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and I wait for His word.
My soul waits in hope for the Lord more than the watchmen for the morning;
Yes, more than the watchmen for the morning.
Israel, wait for the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption. And He will redeem Israel from all his guilty deeds. (Psalm 130)

 

          I like Mr. Peterson’s interpretation of the first line. “The bottom has fallen out of my life!” Of course, the problem for some of us is the fact that we’re drama queens, and/or we’re weak. Any time anything happens that disturbs our sense of mastery and control, the bottom has fallen out of our lives. If the past couple of days have taught me anything, they’ve taught me that I’m weak and don’t handle stress at all well. I am, in other words, a failure.

          Today’s psalm touches on that, too. If God were to look at me the way I look at myself, or even realistically, I’d be a goner, and so would everyone else. But somehow, God forgives. He steps in and offers grace when we’ve screwed up; not once, not twice, but seemingly without number. That means that when the bottom drops out of our lives, we can still have hope that God will forgive and give mercy and redemption.

          And hope is the discipleship concept. But how do we build hope when it all falls apart? I suspect that few of us react by saying, “Oh well, no big deal, God will handle it.” More often, we react like Chicken Little: “The sky is falling!” That’s what the psalmist does. After that, he settles down to wait and with the waiting, he hopes.

          Unless we have an idea - even an exaggerated idea - about things being bad, we have no need to turn to God for help, or to wait. If the bottom never falls out of our lives, we’ll never learn to move beyond Chicken Little to waiting, and therefore to hope.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 13, 2024 at 12:17 PM

    So many times in our lives we feel like complete failures. Thank God we have a God who is forgiving and merciful and does not remember our sin . The hardest thing we have to do is forgivig ourselves.

    ReplyDelete

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