Out of the Pit and Onto Rock

I waited patiently for Yahweh. He turned to me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand. He has put a new song in my mouth, even praise to our God. Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in Yahweh. (Psalm 40:1-3, WEB)

David describes a rescue in slow motion. I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Every verb in it moves at the pace of a real deliverance, which is rarely fast.

The waiting comes first, and David does not pretend it was quick or easy. He waited, and the word he uses carries the ache of it. The pit he waited in is described as miry bog, the kind of ground that gives you nothing to push against, where every effort to climb out just sinks you deeper and leaves you more tired than before you tried. Any man who has attempted to fight his way free of a besetting sin by sheer effort knows that mud intimately. The harder you struggle, the further down you go, and the exhaustion becomes its own trap.

What changes David's footing is not that he finally found a foothold in the bog. There is no foothold in a bog; that is what makes it a bog. It is that God drew him up and set him on rock, ground that was not there before and that David did not make and could not have made. The security of his steps is a gift handed down to him, not an achievement he climbed to. He was lifted, not self-rescued, and he is honest enough to say so.

And then the new song. David does not sing his way out of the pit; he is drawn out, and the song comes after, as the natural sound of a man standing on something solid at last. The praise is a response, not a technique. If you are still in the mud this morning, still sinking every time you strain, keep crying out and keep waiting. The rock is God's to give, and he gives it, and the song will come when your feet are under you.

Lord, I have exhausted myself in the bog. Draw me up and set me on ground I did not make. When you do, put a new song in my mouth, and let others hear it.