In Your Depths, Cry Out to the Lord
Share
“Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;
Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy”
The game Mouse Trap is a board game in which players try to make it to the end of the board without triggering the mousetrap. The player who loses is almost always surprised as the little plastic trap teeters down over their little plastic mouse. Sometimes, no matter how skilled and experienced we are at the game, we get caught in the mouse trap!
Parenthood can feel like the back-and-forth winding of a trip around the Mouse Trap board. No matter how much experience or how many wins we have, the trap comes teetering down over us. The high calling of parenthood requires reliance on God for what only He knows lies in each day ahead. The more experienced I become at being responsible for other human beings, the more I realize how impossible it is to predict or strategize around the daily mouse traps.
A week or so ago, we celebrated my youngest daughter’s baptism, looked forward to our oldest competing in a regional writing contest and celebrated both of them returning to the stage to dance …oh, if only everyday was that social media post-worthy. Most days, so much is happening in between all the highlights I can barely get to posting at all! Family and friends want to stay in touch with our lives via photo shares while I’m still reeling from the last episode of are they my friend or are they my enemy, junior high edition.
Just this week, in a twenty-four hour time span, one of my kids kicked someone at school, triggering a call from her teacher …and the other limped out of practice, trying to tough out an injury. It’s always something. And not just for parents. There are seasons in life that are so weary-laden, we are tired in the core of our souls. Especially after the pandemic we have all been navigating through. Where do we go when the trap teeters over us? We run fast and fully to God, believing and embracing this truth:
“Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy” (Psalm 130:1-2).
The NLT translation reads:
“From the depths of despair, O LORD, I call for your help. Hear my cry, O Lord. Pay attention to my prayer.”
And the Voice paraphrase says:
“From the depths of disaster I appeal to You, O Eternal One: Lord, hear my cry! Attune Your ears to my humble prayer!”
The teetering trap will cause us to cry out to God! Let’s face it, human nature tends toward dramatic reactions! Pain gets our attention, whether physical, spiritual, or mental. Weariness brings us to the end of ourselves, because we were never meant to do life alone. We were meant to walk through it in Christ, and rest in His arms when our circumstances threaten to trap us in despair and hopelessness.
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/tuaindeed
Testimony is a term Christ followers use frequently, to describe their stories of faith. Most love to tell of the way they came to know Jesus, and the powerful change He has initiated in their lives. Testimony is evidence. It’s an open declaration or profession. Testimony is a witness or affirmation. My personal testimony runs parallel to my calling to motherhood. It’s constantly humbling, and sends me clinging to Christ each day with a holy cow I’m going to mess these kids up mentality. In His faithfulness, He pulls me from the storm of my mind and into the calm of His presence, and I’m able to laugh about the chaos instead of letting it eat me alive.
The depths the psalmist wrote about in these verses would have been a striking visual to ancient people. Depths were often associated with the realm of the dead, the pit, silence, darkness, destruction, decay, dust, mire, slime, and mud (NIV). The writer of this psalm was in a bad way! The trap was definitely teetering! Yet, he knew the Lord heard him, regardless of how he got there. Psalm 32:6 says,
“Therefore let all the faithful pray to you while you may be found; surely the rising of the mighty waters will not reach them.”
We all feel the pressure of the depths. The impossible situations and the aches in our confidence muscles that we just can’t seem to kneed out or ice to recovery. We all walk through life with the urge to kick someone who flattens our friend on the playground now and then, and we most certainly all have a sore Achilles heel that threatens to flare up and take us out of the race if we’re not diligent enough to slow down, treat and strengthen it.
The Bible says to guard our hearts, because everything we do flows through it. Following Jesus means to speak less, and listen more; to get quiet, but live loud. And when we come crashing down, we can land safely in the arms of Jesus. As we fall apart from the limits in our abilities, He is faithful to hold us, empathetically, and help us back into the race. Just as the psalmist did in the verses we are studying today, we can come unglued in the presence of God, knowing He hears us, sees us, and loves us. He loves us when we’re healthy, and when we’re dinged up, when we win, and when we’re sidelined with an injury. He loves us when we hug it out with our enemies, and when we kick the kid who decked our friend. His love never, ever wanes. God is unchanging.
My testimony runs alongside my reality as a parent now, but it began alone in a field. Collapsed in a heap, unable to carry the weight of all of the things anymore, He met me there, and has never left me for a single moment since. The depths of God’s love for us will lead us on a journey through life which is more than we can ask for or imagine. Let our testimony be that we trust Him with our lives. He is good, all of the time. All of the time, He is good.
In the depths, cry out to the Lord. He hears our voices. His ears are attentive.
More from this author
Unity Requires Love
God's Timing Is Better Than Our Planning
Watching Our Children Walking in Truth
Photo credit: Unsplash/Luis Alberto Sanchez Terrones
