Across the Pastor’s Desk by Sean Forde

 

Psalm 40:1-2 “I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. 2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.”

The psalmist begins by describing a time when he waited patiently for the Lord. Most people do not exercise these two attributes very well: waiting and patience.

In our fast moving world of instant gratification, if we’re honest, we don’t like to wait for anything or anyone and patience is in short supply. “Waited patiently” implies a certain confidence that what, or in this case, who, the psalmist is waiting for will arrive in perfect timing.

The patient waiting pays off as the Lord “turned to me and heard my cry.”

We do not usually equate our crying with patiently waiting. In fact, the patience and the waiting seem to imply that everything was fine. This is certainly not the case; the psalmist has been continually crying out to the Lord. It’s like a bawling baby in a crib with no one attending to the baby’s needs. But the good news is that the Lord does hear our cries and attends to our needs.

The Lord comes and acts, and his actions are life-saving.

2 “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire.”

Have you ever been in a slimy pit? Have you ever been stuck in the mud and mire of life? This image is of a slippery pit dug deep into the dirty earth with no place to get sure footing. It is a place of constant falling and stumbling. The pit, mud and mire is in the earth and unmistakably low — like the grave. When someone is feeling low, it’s like being one foot closer to the grave. It’s an inescapable situation whereby the only means of survival is by the hands of someone else to pull you out of the pit. The hand that helps is the hand of the Lord, our Savior.

This is who we worship, our saving God who lifts us out of the pit and sets us on a firm place to stand. The Lord lifts us from the lowliness of the grave. The Lord’s action is salvific and life changing. As we are pulled out of the pit, life conditions and our surroundings change. This is significant because salvation means that God doesn’t leave us in the same condition he found us. When the Lord our Savior shows salvation happens, things get better, and life drastically improves.

Sean Forde is a pastor at First Lutheran Church in Albert Lea.