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 Down in the dumps. Drowning in debt. Upside down on your mortgage, the depths of despair. Hitting rock bottom. Marriage on the rocks…

What do all these phrases have in common? They all describe situations that are down, below something else, away from goodness.  In the bible the Psalmist mentions a “pit” 19 times. The pit is described as a place of the deep, a darkness, a place prepared for you by your enemy. A horrible place that anyone who has ever been in one of the clichéd pits above can tell you is indeed deep, dark and horrible.

Any pit has a  top, an opening, and that is where the light is. There is only one way out of a pit and that is up. You must look up, you must look to the light. Looking down is easier but it gets you nothing but more darkness, more muck, more depression. Even if you cannot reach the light you must look to it, reach for it, strive to get there. But how? Again the Psalmist, who is very familiar with the pit gives us the answer:

“But thou are Holy, O Thou that inhabits the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted Thee: they trusted and Thou did deliver them.” (Psalms 22:3) The deliver inhabits the praises of His people. Even in a pit, we must praise. We must not give to looking down, succumb to the temptation to have a pity party sitting in our muck. We must cry out and trust the One who delivers. If we are going to dig deeper we must dig for the faith to trust that God is there no matter how deep the pit. Keep praising and trust God for your deliverance is at hand!

He brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.    Psalms 40:2

This post is an excerpt from “The Little Engine who could Not…” available on Amazon.com in Kindle and paperback.