Canyonlands

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!

O Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive

to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

Psalm 130:1-2

The soul can feel deep anguish. From there the heart cries out to God. In a bottomless canyon of grief, pain, sadness, or loss we can only look up. And from these awful, unimagineable depths, the Lord will hear the desperate cry. The Lord will encourage the soul in this depressed depth of despair. When we are at our lowest, God is near. He hears our cries for mercy. We are never lost in these canyons with only the echoes of our cries for company. God is with us. The scriptures encourage us to pray to Him from the depths, for God will hear and answer our cries for His help.

Jesus knows the deepest of these depths. He knew it in Gethsemane as He agonized in prayer the night of His betrayal, devoting Himself to the pain-filled road before Him. He knew it most from the cross, where His heart cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” Our Great High Priest can sympathize with the darkest, deepest canyons of our souls. He know the greatest of those depths, having gone deeper than any human every could. He took our sorrows with Him to His cross and bore them in His soul in the deepest of dark places so that we can trust His deliverance when we are looking up from our own impossible canyons.

Canyons are both beautiful and dangerous. They seem at times uncrossable, and from the bottom may feel unclimbable. But the God Who made them knows the way through them. And when my soul is in a canyonland, I will cry out to God Who will hear, know, and answer with His merciful love... out of the depths.