Daily Manna · Day 180 · June 29
Out of the Pit
“I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.”
Six months into praying for something, your prayers can sound thinner than they did in the first week. And there is an honest objection to this verse: patience only looks like a virtue once it has worked. "I waited patiently for the LORD" reads well from the far side of the wait. From inside the wait, it can sound like a man being praised for patience because he already knew how things would end.
So think of a man who did not know the ending. Adoniram Judson, an American missionary, reached Burma in 1813. He worked for nearly six years before a single Burmese person was baptized. Years later he spent well over a year in prison, part of that time in iron chains, and his wife Ann died not long after he was released. Still he kept on translating the Bible into Burmese. Knowing how it would turn out was not what kept him going, because he did not know. He lived every one of those years without seeing the end.
The psalm is more honest than people think. In Hebrew the first line says it twice, literally waiting I waited, which is how the language shows that something went on and on. Then come the verbs, and every one of them belongs to God. "He inclined unto me," which means He bent down toward me. "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay." The clay is the point. This pit has no solid floor. It is the kind of mud where every attempt to stand sinks you deeper, and nobody climbs out of it alone. Then, after the rescue, God "set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." That is the half people forget. The rescue came first, then the firm footing, and God built the footing too.
So here is a blessing over you while the wait is still going on. May the God who bends down hear the prayer you have stopped putting into words. May He set your feet on ground that does not move, and steady each step you take afterward. And through the years whose ending you cannot see yet, may you be found still faithful in the work He has given you, the way Judson was found at his translating.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 180 is Knowing Him (Philippians 3:10).