Bogged Down and Out
Psalm 40:1-11 Rev. David J. Clark
The Psalm talks about getting stuck. “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.”
I cannot think about being stuck without remembering a disastrous date when I was 16 years old. It was one of the first dates where I was allowed to drive. And I was with Rhonda, a girl a year older than me who I worked with at McDonald’s. It had taken me months to muster up enough courage to ask her out. If she had gone to my high school, she would have been like most of the other girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day. After dinner, we wound up going up to lookout point, which we weren’t supposed to do. I was on top of the world. She was homecoming queen at her school and she liked me. Somehow the hour got late, and we had about five minutes to get both of us back to our homes on opposite sides of town before we turned into pumpkins.
Coming down the hill, somehow I slid into a snow drift off the side of the road. Rhonda said, “We’re stuck.” She had the rising intonation like lots of teen girls where sentences sound more like questions than declarations. Being the experienced driver I was, I said, “Nah!” No way the best night of my life was going to get ruined like this. I calmly threw it into reverse and floored it. The back tires spun furiously of my 1974 Ford Gran Torino (the kind of car featured on Starsky and Hutch—except mine was a styling 2-tone-brown-4-door sedan). “We’re stuck.” “Nah!” I tried rocking the car forward - reverse. I’d seen lots of people able to work themselves free using this technique. Soon I knew I was in trouble. The clock hit midnight and she switched from “We’re stuck,” to “You’re stuck.”
She was hiding behind her long brown hair. I wasn’t sure how to ask her for help without actually saying, “Help me Rhonda—help help me…. “Getting out and pushing only made matters worse. I was just spinning the wheels and going nowhere except more stuck.
I now had to admit the obvious. I was stuck. But I would have to do more than admit the obvious; I would have to pay for it—in more ways than one. I would have to pay for the phone call for help, for the tow truck, and for the lack of a second chance with Rhonda. Her parents wouldn’t let her go out with me any more—I was too much of a bad boy. (That’s right, me a bad boy. Think I’ll get a temporary tattoo). I would also have to admit to my parents that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, and that I needed help.
It occurs to me that we can get stuck in lots of ways in our lives. Any of you feel like you are spinning your tires today? Going nowhere but spending a lot of energy? We can get stuck in bad habits that keep us in a rut. We can get stuck and not be growing in our relationships, in our careers, in our finances, in our learning and personal growth and development. We can get stuck in bad moods such as anger or grief or depression, or we can get mired down with negative thinking.
Sometimes we are going to feel stuck in life. We want to be different. We believe we can change, that there is something better inside of us, or for us. But we just keep falling into the same old habits and behaviors. It is almost as if there is a big elastic band around your waist and every time you move forward, you feel the tension and after you go so far, you get snapped back. That band is also around a post. The post can be your past, a resentment, or even believing somone who told you that you were no good, that you’d never do any better that you weren’t worthy of getting ahead. And we feel tied to this thing, and can’t ever seem to break free. So we learn to make friends with it. We get used to defeat and negative things to happen. When good things do happen we even have a way of making the worst of that, too.
Some of you are like me and find it hard to root for your favorite team because you just know that no matter how good things are going during the game, no matter how much of a lead your team has that somehow or another they are just going to find a way to blow it. And you can’t enjoy a single play because you dare not get your hopes up again. Instead you are looking for signs of it all coming apart. He has his hands on his hips, maybe he’s getting too tired—maybe he’s going insane out there for lack of hydration. Everything you see confirms the negativity. So it is in life, we start looking for evidence that confirms our preconceived notions that we are won’t ever do well, that we can’t break free from that post, that the universe is out to get us. We’d rather look for evidence that confirms those lies than dare to hope in the truth of the scriptures that declares that we are children of the most high God who have been given a spirit for greatness, not mediocrity. We are supposed to make important contributions to our families, our communities and remember that Jesus came that we might have life abundant. Spend more time looking to the scriptures than your post to define who you are.
So how do we get unstuck? First let me congratulate you on having the sense to come here today. This is the place of change, of transformation. When you come to church you are reminded that you may not be where you want to be, but you don’t have to stay stuck in the miry bog or desolate pit. Our faith is the greatest resource for getting out of the pit. How does it work? It can work in several different ways.
First, I think it is changing your thoughts to remember who you are as the apple of God’s own eye. God isn’t up there counting your mistakes and dwelling on them, so why should you? God has given you abilities to get unstuck. I like the movie scene where a character is trying to justify her boyfriend’s failure on his exam. She said that God must want him to be dumb. He prays for answers to the test, but he doesn’t get them. Of course, he didn’t do his homework or study either. Sounds like a self-defeating plan. But it is a great temptation for all of us to start thinking, “God wants me in the miry bog, in the desolate pit or else he would have brought me out already.”
No for some of us, it’s just time to start using the gifts God has already given us. Just like the car on the side of the road, sometimes it is possible to rock back and forth and get unstuck. Maybe you just need to focus more on using the talents and opportunities that God gives you than to be reading negative things into it all the time. Mostly the way that Jesus helps us get unstuck is to follow him. He invited the disciples to join with him in a process of transformation. We find that when we worship and serve others and pray and gather in fellowship and study, that over time we are indeed changed. It isn’t a magic wand sort of deal, but gradual transformation over time. Our scripture talks about waiting patiently for the Lord. If you stay in the ways of God, you become better and renewed people. We get unstuck.
Sometimes God brings grace and miracles into our lives. Through counselors, medications, changing our patterns and looking for evidence of grace in unlikely circumstances. Do you remember that inspirational story, The Hiding Place? It is about two sisters Betsie and Corrie Ten Boom who helped Jews escape during WWII. Eventually they were caught and sent to a concentration camp -- the closest thing to hell on earth there has ever been. But even there, they saw glimpses of God’s grace. They had to live in a flea infested barracks, but that enabled them to have Bible study because the guards wouldn’t go into it to make their checks on what was going one. Sometimes medicines would miraculously appear -- just in time. Shortly before Betsie was died in the camp she told her sister, “We must tell others what we have learned here. We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.” “We must tell them that there is no pit so deep that God is not deeper still.”
Maybe like my experience with Rhonda, the only thing worse than being stuck is admitting we are stuck. And even if we sense it, it is harder yet to ask for help. None of us wants to look weak. None of us wants to admit we made choices that led to our being stuck. None of us wants to be needy and have to ask someone else for help.
Maybe that is why so many people stay stuck. They would rather be stuck than admit they need help. Instead of looking foolish, or human, they would rather sit there spinning their wheels. I tell you, that it is more foolish to stay stuck than to do what it takes to get out. I say that it is more courageous to do what it takes to get your life back on the right track than it is to sit there in the miry bog.
Dark secrets have power in our lives--negative power. Sometimes we think no one would understand, we don’t admit our problems. I’ve gotten myself in trouble and thought that I couldn’t admit my problem to anyone—that it would ruin me. What I didn’t realize was that I couldn’t get unstuck until I let loose of the energy of keeping the secret and lived more honestly. So many people said after it was too late, “If I had only known, I would have done anything to help.”
Sometimes we just have to ask for help. The next day after I got stuck in my car, my dad and I went up the hill to get my car towed out. About a 100 yards away from my car, he stopped and pointed to the side of the road and pointed in the ditch. “You see that place right there? Would you believe that I slid into that ditch 20 years ago when I was dating your mother.”
Sometimes when we ask for help, people will be more gracious to us than we could ever imagine because we are all human and have made mistakes. That is what the church is. We are a community of people who have all been in the ditch. We have all spun our tires and we can respond with grace and compassion. We can help, knowing we are all in this together.
And God is no different. When we get stuck, we can call our heavenly Father and he will hear us and send us help instead of berating and belittling us. The promise of the Psalm is that God always helps to get us unstuck and on the way of discipleship again.
The Lord lifted me out of the miry bog and put my feet on solid rock.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
