Miry Depths

Psalm 69:1-2 Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. But in the age of AI, how can we know if the picture is actually a picture? But I digress! We use pictures all the time. In fact, often how we explain things is in picture language. Some say all our language is picture language.

Do you remember tying to explain how rain happens to a preschooler? Or explaining how a bee gathers nectar and makes honey? Or how a car starts when you turn the key?

If you can remember any of those conversations that were effective, I can bet that you used pictures of other things to explain the current question. You talked about clouds being like sponges collecting the water until they couldn’t hold any more. Then it rained. You didn’t talk about relative humidity and high and low pressure systems. You used images that they could understand in order to help them understand things they couldn’t yet understand.

Our text begins a Psalm that portrays someone in great turmoil in the face of his enemies. You might think the verses today would fit with Jonah as he was struggling to survive in the water. But the water here is not H2O. The water are the multiple attacks that keep coming over him, again and again.

Have you ever been in a place where you felt like attacks kept coming and you felt like you were drowning in them? That is how the author felt. Repeated attacks, often of the same type, again and again.

The same themes repeat in the Psalm itself. Take time to read and note the repeated words and language of the attacks that come. It might surprise you the folding and weaving of this Psalm.

I find it interesting that the Psalm ends with praise and prayer. Even in the face of such turmoil, peace can be found. We need to express the turmoil. We need to give voice to what is troubling us. But in the end, we must find peace in the LORD.