# 366 A journey through the Psalms. Psalm 130. An act of inordinate boldness.

Have you ever read or listened to a story of a person who seemed to have hit “rock bottom” in their lives, and wondered, just how low can a human being go? And then even thought that it would seem that their situation was hopeless, even beyond redemption? Or just maybe, you have felt that way about yourself at some stage?

I recently heard about a man, Johnny Chang, who would certainly describe himself as having been in that place. Brought up in the USA in a poor and dysfunctional family with an abusive father, he joined a street gang and eventually ended up in youth detention and then jail from the ages of 12 to 24. He described himself as being “empty and depressed” until he was found by Jesus.   You can hear his story on  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP8ixeAN7XQ  

Psalm 130 could very easily be a description of his situation, being similar in some ways to the psalmist, who said:

 From the depths of despair, O Lord, I call for your help.                                              ² Hear my cry, O Lord. Pay attention to my prayer.(vv. 1-2 NLT)

Certainly, being in the depths of despair is not a great place to be – or is it?

Sadly, sometimes being in the depths of despair is where we need to be in order to bring us to our senses, to cause us to call for [God’s] help.

But is there such a place as being too low for God to hear? Especially considering how “high” God is!

The prophet Isaiah understood just how awesome and  “high” God was when he was given a vision of heaven. He wrote:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. ² Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. ³ And they were calling to one another:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory.”

⁴ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

Isaiah’s reaction though was to realize how “low” he was as compared to this Holy God. He wrote:

⁵ “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:1-5)

Later on in his prophecy he wrote:

For this is what the high and exalted One says—
    he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place…”  (Isaiah 57:15a)

Concerning Psalm 130, Brueggemann comments that when the psalmist calls out to God for help from the depths of his despair, that this is a powerful prayer. “In fact, the prayer is an act of inordinate [or unusual] boldness. In one sweeping rhetorical move it proposes to make a link between the ruler of reality enthroned and the most extreme, remote circumstance of human need… The psalm thereby strikes one of the most poignant evangelical notes of all the psalter… This psalm is the miserable cry of a nobody from nowhere. [Yet] the cry penetrates the veil of heaven! It is heard and received… The gospel affirms that the cries from the depths are the voices to which Yahweh is peculiarly attuned. This God is palpable, available – a staggering comment both about God and about the speaker. Moreover, the Lord is attentive to and moved by the beggar. A new solidarity is forged in the moment of speaking between the Lord and “the least,” a new binding between the throne and the depths.”  (# 2)

And so the psalmist is then able to confidently say:  

³ Lord, if you kept a record of our sins,
    who, O Lord, could ever survive?
⁴ But you offer forgiveness,
    that we might learn to fear you.  (NLT)

And Isaiah in chapter 6 was able to write:

⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”  (Isaiah 6:6)

And later in chapter 57 he also says that although God live[s] in a high and holy place,

 … but [He] also [lives] with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
    and to revive the heart of the contrite. (Isaiah 57:15b)

The writer of Deuteronomy also wrote a similar truth:

¹⁴ To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. ¹⁵ Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.  (Deuteronomy 10:14)

So, it seems that there really is no such thing as being too low. No such place where God is not able and willing to hear our cries for help.

Jesus summed it up when he said: For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. (Luke 19:10) and I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10:10)

Father, having been forgiven (and much more), may we like the psalmist, learn to fear you.   (v. 4. NLT)