When You Are Still on the Ground

The enemy of your soul does his best work in the moments right after a fall, when you are still down and everything is quiet. That is when he leans in to tell you it is finished, that this is who you are and who you will always be. Micah answers him from the dirt. Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.

This is not a man pretending he has not fallen. He has, and he says so. What he refuses to grant his enemy is the interpretation. The fall is real, but the fall is not the last word, because the man on the ground has a God who is a light in exactly the kind of darkness he is sitting in right now.

You can say this before you feel it. You can say it while you are still ashamed and have no evidence yet that anything will change. The rising is not something you have to see in advance; it is something God has promised, and Micah stakes his defiance on the promise rather than on his mood.

Father, I have fallen and I am sitting in the dark. Be my light here, before I feel better, before I have fixed anything. I will rise because you lift me, and I tell my accuser he does not get to decide how this ends.