Submerged

"Out of these depths, I cry out to you, O Lord"

Psalm 130:1.

Have you ever experienced what it's like, even if only briefly, to be drowning,

or finding yourself unable to breathe, gasping for air,

or waking up in the middle of the night, experiencing something happening to you that makes you feel as though you are close to death?

Perhaps, like me, you've experienced all three of these physically, and the awful realisation that you are not in control when these moments befall you.

How small your life suddenly becomes, and how readily you find yourself crying out for help and remedy.

Desperation of course, doesn't have to be brought on by something quite so immediately extreme. There is many circumstances that befall us in the more common experiences of life that can open a void of desperation in our fragile nature's and leave us thinking and feeling that we're abandoned to the fierce rages of whatever will befall us next. As one friend noted on Facebook this week, 'It's not always the 'giants' - the overwhelming enemies, the major battlefields, that prove the most exhausting and dangerous. It's often the ongoing, subtle, seductive, soul-gnawing smaller things in life that wear us down'.

Tragedy of one kind or another rains down hard upon our world every day.

There's very few of us who can look back on this year without having known some of the full measure of that.

Cruel times.

The Psalmist could write of a thousand, even ten times that, falling at his side, because he clearly often lived in peril - some of which was clearly of his own making - and none of us can truly steer clear continually of all manner of such troubles.

The truth is that we often may narrowly avoid one agony only to find ourselves confronting another.

Being someone in communion with the most high does not usually mean that such issues are avoided. David knew the sweetness of God's fellowship, but he also knew that such a union could also bring particular and targeted trails through others, and through his own miss-directed desires. The Lord is most certainly not 'tamed' in such circumstances, but genuine cries for aid and mercy do not go unheard.

Steadfast love towards us and plentiful (boy, do I need that!) redemption (Psalm 130:7) are the firm pillars upon which David knows he can depend in any crisis, even when it involves facing our very real end.

There is a need for another abandonment when we're in these deep waters, because the truth is there are depths we cannot escape, and those moments must be given over entirely to the faithfulness of another.

Amidst our dangerous days, God is given primarily to us in the tangible embodiment of His Son, and it is in that giving that we most evidently see, in our living and our dying, that His great intention is to ravish our whole eternal existence, including our terror and demise, in the depths of that extraordinary love.

To quote from a recent article on the deep nature of judgement and love:

"To describe God's love, C S Lewis invokes many analogies - love of pets, love of a Father for a child - but the most accurate analogy, he warns, is also 'full of danger'; that is, the love 'between the sexes'. The insanity, the out-of-control-ness of erotic love. This type of love (and here he quotes Dante) is 'a lord of terrible aspect':

"When Christianity says that God loves humanity, it means that God loves us: not that He has some 'disinterested', but in truth indifferent concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The 'great spirit' you so lightly invoked, the Lord of terrible aspect is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of guests, but a consuming fire that is the Lord Himself - the love that made and sustains worlds".

This type of love is not convenient or pragmatic or even always kind.

It may actually be unhealthy. It is possessive and unruly, bringing bad weather as often as good".

The author then goes on to speak of how such deep love is often passionate and can therefore be judged as unruly - turbulent and often unreadable until its full, burning itent becomes evident. Our faith is not tame, regimented or predictable - it inhabits the storm as much as the still waters, and yet, like David, in the midst of all our troubles, it is the love we cry for... the love we need.

As I considered these truths on my trip to work today, I was reminded that

God, in the Incarnation, has married Himself to us, body, bone and blood,

hence the vibrant, wholesome intimacy of that somewhat overwhelming resurrection breakfast on the beach, when men learn they must eat and drink of that essential union amidst the most trying of promised requirements and trials.

That is where the depths of love become foremost, and takes us beyond any staid or inadequate entwining with the depths of our Lord and Saviour.

Life drives us into all manner of agonies and ecstasies, because we are creatures with yearnings that can only be met, only be righteously fulfilled, in the One who has furnished us for such ends.

Let us drive hard to press in to His ways and His communion with us.

It will clothe our short days here with a genuine value, rich, endearing and eternal.