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"That Sinking Feeling" - January 27 2008 - Rev. Ney
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January 27, 2008 “That Sinking Feeling” Rev. Vicky Ney
Text: Psalm 40:1-11
The image of being drawn out of the pit popped out at me this week as I was reading this Psalm passage. Just a week or so ago, I was watching the mini-series Comanche Moon on TV. This new series was the prequel to Lonesome Dove, one of my all-time favorites Westerns in recent memory. On the show, Captain Scull is placed in a pit by a Mexican bandit—a really nasty bad guy. Captain Scull has to kill poisonous snakes with his bare hands and survive on the small amount of food and water he is given. His clothes fall to rags. His mind comes and goes. His skin is blistered by the desert sun. But through it all, he never loses faith that his Texas Rangers will come with his ransom price and rescue him.
I thought immediately about the parallels to David in this Psalm. David is in some sort of pit. He’s experienced that sinking feeling—in that desolate pit in a miry bog—like he’s being sucked down into some quicksand. He just can’t get out and he can’t get a foothold. It could have been an illness, perhaps even one of his narrow escapes from enemies in a battle. Whatever the circumstance, David was in a pit. In another Psalm, David cried, “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.” (Ps. 69:1-2)
I think we know that feeling. Been there, done that. Lots of the Psalms speak of having that sinking feeling—drowning in a pit of despair. We children of God cry out when the bog of oblivion threatens to overwhelm us—when our feet just can’t touch bottom, and we’re flailing around in the water of fear.
When do you and I get that sinking feeling? Is it when we’re facing another visit with the doctor? Is it when a child is sick? Is it when we don’t know where a spouse is or when they will come home? Is it when we can’t seem to help a wayward child get back on track? Is it because an addiction has wrapped its spiny fingers about our throats and is pulling us under, deeper and deeper, until we imagine that there is no way out? Is it when we’re out of work and worried about the bills that keep piling up? Is it when grief overcomes us with a sudden memory of a loved one who is gone? Or grief over memories of opportunities we’ve squandered? Pits—miry bogs—come in all sizes and shapes and threaten to overwhelm us.
Whatever the pit was for David, he did not lose faith that God would rescue him. He was going under, but his outstretched arm did not disappear into the deadly quicksand. A strong rescuing hand pulled him from the pit of despair and placed him safely on land. In Psalm 40, David says, “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.” (Ps. 40:1-2)
I love the words he uses.
He. God, the helper, the agent of change.
Drew up. God initiates the pulling action. God draws us up. God does not pull us down. No matter where we are, no matter what muck we’re in, God did not put us there. But God is there to pull us out.
Set my feet on a rock. God gets us out of the mucky bog, where it’s impossible to move forward, and sets us on solid ground.
Making my steps secure. The result is that we’re safe. We can walk once again with confidence.
Of course, this all began with “waiting” and not only waiting, but “patiently waiting,”
How do we wait for God? Waiting isn’t easy, is it? Someone once said that the hardest part of waiting is waiting. Waiting involves time and we don’t know when our waiting will be over. If we knew it was going to be a short wait, it would be one thing. But it sometimes involves a great deal of time—time when we sometimes feel as though we’re hanging on by our fingernails!
I ran into the Foodtown the other day, in a hurry as usual, and I could feel my irritation rising that the checker was taking so long; even the receipt seemed to take long to print! How many times do we become inpatient—impatient for the coffee to brew, for the computer printer to print, the traffic light to change? We live in a culture of convenience and instant gratification, and I think that we have lost the art of waiting. People in developing countries may wait in line for hours for a loaf of bread. People in places like Afghanistan or Gaza may wait for weeks. But we’re irritated if the line at McDonald’s isn’t moving fast enough.
I believe patience is a spiritual quality that God wants us to develop. But often we are upset if something doesn’t happen immediately, and we lose hope. But hope is essential for us as a people of faith.
Not long before his death, the Christian writer Henri Nouwen wrote a book called Sabbatical Journeys, in which he wrote about some friends of his who were trapeze artists, called the Flying Roudellas. They told Nouwen that there is a special relationship between the flyer and the catcher on the trapeze. This relationship is governed by important rules, such as “The flyer is the one who lets go, and the catcher is the one who catches.” As the flyer swings on the trapeze high above the crowd, the moment comes when he must let go. He flings his body out in mid-air. His job is to keep flying and wait for the strong hands of the catcher to take hold of him at just the right moment. One of the Flying Roudellas told Nouwen, “The flyer must never try to catch the catcher.” The flyer’s job is to wait in absolute trust. The catcher will catch him, but he must wait.
It’s the same thing for us: The Catcher, God, will catch us, but we must wait.
It’s possible to fail in our waiting and get ahead of God. You wait and nothing seems to happen, so you panic and start to work things out on your own. We make some bad decisions or do things in haste. We start trying to catch God instead of waiting for God to catch us. Waiting is an art, and timing is everything.
By the way, waiting—patiently waiting—is not a passive activity. Waiting does not mean just sitting down in the waiting room and doing nothing. You need to wait expectantly. You have to be watching and looking for God to fulfill his promises. You have to believe he is going to do it. It is possible to get ahead of God when we try to work things out ourselves, but it is also possible that we could miss what God is doing because we are just waiting without really expecting God to really come through.
We also need to wait faithfully. To be faithful means to be full of faith—faith full—faith that completely trusts and depends on God. It is active faith. It is love that results in action. It is a faith that keeps doing the right thing even when the waiting becomes long. That’s where “trust” comes in. Five little letters. Easy word to spell. Hard thing to do.
I have often said over the years that I believe trust is easier as we grow older. When you’re young, feeling really full of yourself, strong and self-reliant, without a lot of life experience, trusting in God can be a little difficult. Sometimes, at that point in life, I don’t think we really feel like we need God all that much. We think we’re doing pretty well on our own. But as you go through life and watch the ways in which God has rescued you and brought you through some really rough times—brought you up from some slimy pits over the years—you can remember that God will come through for you again. That’s called trust.
I’m not saying trust comes automatically, but you begin to have reference points for your trust.
The Psalmist David was very much a part of the ancient Jewish world of faith. The ancient Greeks were very different about faith. They would have talked about God’s essence. They would have said things like, “God is the ground of all being,” and used impressive words like “omnipotence” and “omnipresence” in order to describe God. The Hebrew people, on the other hand, did not even try to get at the essence of God. They knew it was past finding out. Instead of talking about what God is, they liked to talk about what God did. If you asked them about God, they would have said, “Our God is the One who delivered us from the hands of the Egyptians and brought us through the Red Sea and into the Promised Land. Our God defended us against our enemies, has guided us, and has called us his own.” They knew that they were in a covenant relationship with God, and that God would not break that covenant. They knew that God would go on loving them, no matter what—because of what God had already done.
We can be like that, too. Because of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, we can be sure that God adores us and will take care of us. God made a new covenant with us through the cross of Calvary. We can be sure that when our depression literally sucks us into a dark pit, God will reach out a hand to grab us. As the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Romans, we can have confidence that God is working in everything for our ultimate good. (Romans 8:28)
One last little lesson from this Psalm: praise precedes petition. What has been done in the past is not to be forgotten. In fact, thanks and praise become the foundation for confidence that God will continue to deliver us in the future. Remembering past help from God is not just an exercise in nostalgia, it gives us hope when we face new threats in the future. Because we know God accompanied us in the past, we are more confident that God is with us now and will continue to be. It builds us up so that we can step out in faith—not because we are confident in ourselves—but because we know that God is always with us. We can wait patiently for the Lord knowing that his strong hands will keep us from that sinking feeling. That’s the knowledge that can transform our lives with hope.
The prophet Isaiah said these wise words: “Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)
Will you pray with me?
Almighty God, we praise and thank you for your love and your constant care for us. We thank you for the times you have brought us through rough situations. O God, help us to wait for you—give us the strength to wait—to remember that you will help us. Help us to remember that we are the flyers and you are the catcher—and that you WILL catch us and never let us fall.
We ask this in the strong and powerful name of Jesus. Amen.
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