View From the Pit

It seems I never find myself far from Psalm 40...

I waited patiently for the Lord;

And He inclined to me, and heard my cry.

He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay;

And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.

And He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God;

Many will see and fear,

And will trust in the Lord.

First of all, being in a pit is not a bad place to be. Why? It causes me to look up. It causes me to wait patiently for the Lord. It causes me to acknowledge my dependence upon God. It makes me realize that He is my only hope and my only salvation.

When you are in a pit, your vision is limited and narrow and focused...

and expectant.

When you are in a pit, you hope for your deliverance to be imminent. When you are in a pit, your emotions swing wildly from believing help will appear at any given second to wondering if your last breath has just been inhaled. There's really no in between emotions in pit-living.

No one can climb out of a pit in their own strength, in their own craftiness. Down in the pit, there are no materials with which to build a ladder of escape.

Not gonna find or build a ladder like this.

The nights are really dark and cold and lonely. The days are only slightly different. The food is lousy or non-existent. The silence is deafening.

And if it rains, the pit only gets worse... because the clay becomes miry.

People in pits spend a lot of time crying out for help. Patiently seems to be a bad word choice. No one waits patiently in a pit. No one passes the time in a pit by knitting, doing a crossword or sudoku puzzle.

Intently is a better description of the waiting. In a pit the waiting is completely, intently focused upon help arriving. This is a picture of complete, utter dependence upon the outside source which will come.

And the only possible place from where the help could arrive, is from above.

So, being in a pit is a good place to be...

I guess.

To say that "Pit-Living is a good thing" seems foolish, so contrary to all I can see and touch and even feel. Which reminds me of 1 Corinthians 1:18:

For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God

Waiting for my new song today. How about you?