Out of Your Depth

Here's a devotion for you today, from HomeTouch:

Look at verses 1 and 2 of Psalm 130, the Bible reading for today.
 
Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. / Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive / to the voice of my supplications!


Perhaps you have heard the expression: “out of your depth.” This is a common idiom which refers to those who don’t have the skill or experience to handle a situation they’re in. In other words, the idiom is speaking about those who are in deep water and cannot swim very well, or cannot swim at all. They’re “in over their heads,” perhaps.

We know from the first words of this psalm that the writer is in a boatload of trouble. But what kind of trouble? Scholars are not sure. But whatever it was, he was in deep. He was like the foxhole soldier praying and making deals with God. The psalmist is not ready to give up, but he’s close. He asks God to listen to him.

Have you ever felt this way?

There’s an old Peanuts cartoon that has Charlie Brown sitting at Lucy’s psychiatric booth (the one with the famous banner, “Psychiatric Help, 5¢”).

After Lucy dispenses one of her typically twisted diagnoses, Charlie Brown is left sitting there, head in his hands. With a forlorn look on his face, he implores the cosmos above, “Where do I go to give up?”

It’s a question many others have asked, including the psalmist. Maybe even us. We’ve tried everything and find ourselves at the end of our rope. Nothing seems to help. Problems loom ominously on every side, and they seem insurmountable.

“Where do I go to give up?”

You go to Jesus ⎯ as the old spiritual tells us, as does the Bible itself:

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen / Nobody knows but Jesus.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen / Glory, Hallelujah.
Sometimes I’m up, sometimes / I’m down, oh, yes Lord;
Sometimes I’m almost / To the ground, oh yes, Lord.
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen; Nobody knows but Jesus.


—Timothy Merrill

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you know the trouble I am in. You know all about my troubles. Hear me when I cry for help, and thank you for helping me. It’s in your name I pray. Amen.

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