Out of the Depths

"Out of the depths I have cried to you, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! " (Psalm 130:1-2 NKJV)

What follows, I have taken, verbatim, from the daily devotional that CBN Israel posts every Monday. This one was posted on October 7, 2024, the one-year anniversary of the horrific attack on their nation by Hamas.

     Have you ever found yourself in the depths of despair—where everything around you seems to be crashing down? Real despair, where the situation seems hopeless?

      In those moments, our despair, circumstances, and pains seem draining, and crying out to God feels hopeless, exhausting, and worthless.

      The psalmist was there: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice!” Being in the depths overwhelms us—our energy, our senses, our stability. 

      And in those moments, finding the trust to cry out to God becomes our greatest act of faith. The cry from the depths to God assumes He is there to answer and will answer. 

      The question comes to us in a myriad of different ways, “Has God really said?” “Is He really there?” The depths of our despair amplify such questions. Yet will we trust God and cry out to Him in our moments of pain and struggle?

      Job did not receive the answer to the question he asked of God. But God answered Job. That is what matters: that God answers our cries. The causes of our despair—the “whys” and the “how comes” of our despair—are rarely answered. But God answers. His ears are attentive to our cries.

      Faith means trust. The author of Hebrews claimed that without trust we cannot please God. These difficult and agonizing moments in our lives give us the unique opportunity to trust that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).

      When we find ourselves in the depths of despair, trusting God may seem impossible. Our circumstances may even challenge our trust in His existence.

      Trusting God does not mean “we fake it until we make it” or put on our “happy, faith face.”

      Trusting God is crying out to Him from the depths, pleading for His attention. These cries trust that there is One who listens and answers.

      Circumstances may not immediately change. Yet, we trust a God who hears our cries and will not leave us in the depths forever. And we can never forget: He not only hears us in our depths, He hears the cries of others in their depths, too.

      Prayer

Father, we trust You to answer and hear our cries. Do not be deaf to our voice but hear us from the depths and answer. Amen.

This ends the CBN Israel devotional but perhaps it sparks the glimmer of hope for any of us who may be presently experiencing a dose of despair.  In the depth of my despair, I will “cowboy up” and call out to Abba Father, no matter that my emotions or my imperfect intellect wants me to crawl under the table with my blanky and my binky, feel sorry for myself and sink further down the rabbit hole of despair.  I will shout “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and ALL that is within me.  Bless His holy name!”