Out of the Depths Have I Cried Unto Thee

A man told me he was not in a fit condition to pray, and I asked him what a fit condition would look like, and he could not describe it.

He tried. He said something about being calmer. He said something about having sorted out one particular thing first. He said something about being in a better place, and then he stopped, because he heard how vague it was.

And I asked him how long he had been waiting to be in a fit condition, and he said about two years.

Two years of not praying while waiting to be in a state suitable for praying. And nobody had ever told him that the psalm most people know about crying out was prayed by somebody who did not climb anywhere first.

The preposition again

Here is the first line of the hundred and thirtieth psalm, and it is four words long in the important part.

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. (Psalm 130:1, King James Version)

Out of the depths. Not after the depths. Not having been raised from them.

He is in them while he is speaking. The praying is happening at the bottom, and the psalm does not describe any preparation before it, and there is no verse in which he improves his position first.

That is a small grammatical observation and it has taken years off some people's waiting.

You are able to pray from exactly where you are, and the psalm has the crying happening out of the depths rather than after them (Psalm 130:1), and it is His Spirit who makes a prayer from the bottom as real as one from anywhere else.

What he says the ground is

And then, four verses in, he names why this is possible, and the reason is not about him at all.

But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. (Psalm 130:4)

There is forgiveness with thee. That is the whole basis, and it is located entirely on God's side of the sentence, and it is stated as a fact about God rather than as a description of the man praying.

Which means the entry is not a condition somebody achieves. It is something that is already true where they are heading.

You are not being admitted on the basis of your condition, and the psalm puts the reason on His side and never on the psalmist's (Psalm 130:4), and that part belongs to the Holy Spirit, who makes a fact about God into a door a person can walk through in the state they are in.

And Jonah, in the strangest location anybody has ever prayed from, says the same thing about where he was when he did it.

I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice. (Jonah 2:2)

Out of the belly. He is inside something when he speaks and inside it when he is heard, and the hearing is reported in the same sentence as the location.

Where the ladder came from

I want to be fair about where this belief comes from, because nobody invents it out of nothing.

Some of it is hospitality culture, and I say that as somebody raised inside one. In a house like mine you do not arrive in a state. You wash, you present yourself properly, you do not bring your trouble to a table until it is arranged into something a host can respond to. That is a good instinct about people and it becomes a terrible instinct about God.

Some of it is having watched other people pray well. A person who has only ever heard composed prayer assumes composure is the entry requirement rather than a style.

And some of it is a straightforward misreading of reverence. It feels respectful to wait until you are decent. Nobody ever says out loud that this leaves God waiting outside the exact hours a person most needs Him.

You have been applying good manners in the one place they do not belong, and there is no verse anywhere that makes a condition the entry (Psalm 130:1). That work is the Spirit's, and He unpicks an instinct that a person absorbed long before they had any theology.

And Jesus tells a story with two men praying and the one He commends does not tidy himself up at all.

And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. (Luke 18:13)

Standing afar off. Would not lift up his eyes. Seven words of prayer. And Jesus says that man went home justified rather than the other one.

The other man in that story is the one who had done all the preparation. He is the one with the record and the composure and the correct posture, and Jesus is not commending him.

You are not behind anybody in that room, and the man with the preparation is the one who went home unchanged (Luke 18:13), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes seven ragged words count for more than a finished speech.

And this belongs here plainly, because this category reaches people in real danger. Where somebody has been at the bottom long enough that being here at all has come into question, that is not for an article to hold. Tell a person today: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, somebody who can sit with you, or call the 988 crisis line, in the United States. Going is strength.