Engulfed
When I was a kid, my peers and I weren’t afraid of drowning. Don’t get me wrong, we had a healthy respect for water. We took swimming lessons. We learned how to throw life preservers to people in distress. We learned about swimming at the beach and how to avoid the undertow. Despite all this, water was not a source of angst.
On the other hand, there was a threat greater than water – a danger so omnipresent that it made it into countless movies and cartoons. It was a peril from which there was no escape. I speak, of course, of the threat of quicksand.
If you grew up when I did, you were convinced that one of the chief dangers of the natural world was quicksand. (The other was carnivorous plants.) We were convinced that if you got trapped in quicksand, there was no way out. It was the source of night terrors and daytime fears.
In Psalm 69, David writes:
“Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.”
Psalm 69:1-2, NIV
If you read this passage and are not bothered by the idea of waters rising up to your neck because you’re a decent swimmer, imagine that David is talking about quicksand. What he describes is being trapped with no escape. There is no hope of rescue.
Perhaps you feel like that. We’re all back to work after the Christmas holidays; students are back in school; vacations are over; and some of us find that life has become overwhelming again. Not the overwhelming that we feel with 1,001 holiday preparations and decisions to make, but the feeling of being trapped in our daily lives.
Where should we turn when we feel like that? David tells us: We turn to the Lord. If you have a chance today, read the entirety of Psalm 69. It moves from the depths of despair to the heights of joy, resting in the salvation of God. May this be your prayer today.
“The Lord hears the needy
and does not despise his captive people.”
Psalm 69:33, NIV
