‘Going On In’ to the Depth of God

“Into your hands I commit my spirit;

you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.”

~Psalm 31:5 (NRSV).

There are exceptional times in life that prove anything but exceptional at that time. They challenge us, pressing us between unsympathetic plates, forcing us to move. What brings them to us is anything and everything.

Life Crises Call Us to ‘Go On In’ to God

“Let me abide in your tent forever,

find refuge under the shelter of your wings.”

Selah

~Psalm 61:4 (NRSV).

Experience in life that is sharp and effusive we cannot get away from, so we go the other way—to God. We ‘go on in’ to God, to God’s depth, in ours.

This is the fix we need. How is it we can feel the fresh breath of God at our depth? We go into God’s depth; into the sanctuary of God. We holler or we howl or we bark from within or we simply rest in our numbness. God’s there. At our depth, there he is!

Like going into a secure chamber then, we find the Spiritual place when we’re all curled up on our beds, a sodden mess. Or when we’re determined to push on but don’t quite know how; the Spiritual place of God where we ‘go on in’ is right there, ever present it seems, but only visible then at our darkest or neediest ebb.

There in a Moment

For moments, days or months, the strange nemesis breaks over us like bleak and hanging weather pattern, meandering in gentle variation, but just hanging. None of us gets to a place where we are ever beyond the threat of it, though some seem never to be plagued.

Still, who knows but God?

It is a thoroughly delicious actuality, then, to find God has provided something as an antidote to it. Why this strange nemesis comes—one that’s unique to ourselves—we cannot rationalise, and yet only we identify with it ever personally. No one can feel it like we can.

‘Going On In’ for Simple Pleasure Too

There is the possibility of ‘going on in’ when things are going great; the ecstasy of worship, for instance—that which is lost in the ooze of bliss-filled love for an All-Mighty God.

But truly God is more concerned for assuaging the estranged heart, lost and broken in calamity, swept off in a flood of distress. That’s the theology of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15).

God is just as much depth as he is height, and the beauty of that is—as is consistent with our quite needy-for-God nature—we’ll very much easily ‘go on in’ more when we are at our depth than when we are at our dizziest height.

God knows us—you and I. Go on in whenever you need to.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.