Deep

I’d been through the darkest years of my life and had somehow survived thanks to the kindness of close friends and church family. But it was such an anomaly – an uncharacteristic blip on the screen – that it was easy to just tie a millstone around it all and send it straight to the bottom of the sea. Out of sight, out of mind.

But then came the dream: all around me was inky blackness and I was keenly aware that I was deep down in the ocean where even light gave up the fight. Overhead a warm glow appeared – like a Touched By An Angel moment – illuminating a rusty, carbuncled door of a sunken ship. I tried and tried to turn the huge round hatch handle, but it wouldn’t budge. I used my feet and legs to try and force the door open, to no avail. And as I labored, I felt the Lord lean in and gently say,

You buried it good and deep, didn’t ya?

And just like the crew discovering ruins from the Titanic, with one simple question He uncovered the wreckage of my not-so-perfect life, and with it, he raised the disappointment and fear and shame from the dark depths and brought them up into the light.

You see, I may have hidden it from people around me, but I hadn’t hidden it from Him – He knew right where it was all along.

Truth be told, there is no depth so deep that His love can’t reach it. No matter the inky blackness. No matter the years that have rolled past. No matter the disappointment and fear and shame. No matter how truly dead a thing might be.

Because God has a way of resurrecting dead things.

¹ You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.
⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

– Psalm 139