Daily || Seven
I sit here at the kitchen table this morning as the warm Spring sun floods the room. The same chair I sit in every day, with the same coffee cup I use every day, with the same Bible I open every day.
This morning I felt thirsty. Not for the warm coffee to my right, or the refreshing cold water to my left. I just felt thirsty for a truth that held me close and lifted me up. A truth I could read again and again and feel the weightless freedom just the same each time. Not because I'm in the depths of a fiery trial, aching for a drop of water to cool me. Just because I'm thirsty.
I opened to the Psalms, my go to fountain of refreshment. My eyes scanned the words of Psalm 29 (because it is March 29th, of course). Still the truth I wanted and needed wasn’t found. I turned the thin, familiar pages once more and came to Psalm 129. While my eyes bounced from word to word, I felt safer, but not quite where I thought I needed to be.
My eyes jumped to the next paragraph, the words “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!” stood out to me as brightly as the sun is shining, and I had to keep reading.
Psalm 130. Let me put it here, because I strongly feel that you cannot go on without reading these beautiful words our God placed perfectly in the middle of our Bible. Words I know he placed in the heart of someone thousands of years ago, just so you could read them with me today.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
That you may be feared.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
And in his word I hope;
My soul waits for the Lord
More than watchmen for the morning,
More than watchmen for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
And with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
From all his iniquities.
Don’t these words just crush you with freedom, they scream hope and lightness. Read them again. Slowly, feel them, let the pure truth settle into the cracks of your heart.
As I’ve read these words four times now, it feels each time as if Jesus is grabbing me by the shoulders, looking me straight in the eyes, and saying,
“I hear you. I forgive you! I’m here! My love is here! My Redemption is here!”
Those words, “out of the depths.”
We’ve all been there, in the middle of the tumultuous ocean, waves pushing us back down to the darkness. Most days I feel that just living in the world, day to day, is our “depths.” So full of sin and ugliness, that just gets worse and worse.
We read this Psalmist crying out, can’t you just picture it? This man, on his knees, looking to the heavens. I can see the tears pouring from him, his hand clutched to his chest.
“O Lord! Hear my voice!”
Sometimes His voice, his mercy, his forgiveness, his love, his redemption, feels miles and miles away from us. Sometimes it feels like we are standing on our front porch, just waiting. Waiting for the wind to blow, waiting for the Lord to move.
Oh, but it is here. Right here, in the middle of His Word, nestled neatly and beautiful into the eight verses of Psalm 130. He moves with each line, each repetition, molding our hearts to reflect his face more clearly.
Hold it today, clutch is to your chest.
His redemption is plentiful.
That’s all the truth I need.
