Out of the Deep, I Call

The singer of this song was in trouble,
and the trouble was his own fault.
He had done wrong things, more than one,
and he could not take them back.
He felt like a man sunk
to the bottom of deep, dark water,
too far down for anyone to reach.

So he did the one thing left.
He called up out of the deep.

"LORD, I am crying to you
from down here at the bottom!
Lord, hear my voice!
Turn your ear toward me
and listen while I beg for mercy."

Then he thought about his wrongs,
and a frightening question came.

"LORD, if you kept a list
of every wrong thing we do,
who could stand in front of you?"

(If God had written it all down,
the singer's list alone
would have needed a donkey to carry it.)

No one could stand,
not the singer, not the priests at the temple,
not even the best person in all Israel.

But right there the song turned around.

"With you there is forgiveness," he sang,
"so we bow before you in wonder."

He did not climb out of the deep that minute.
He waited.

"I wait for the LORD.
All of me waits.
I hope in what he has promised."

In those days watchmen stood on the city wall all night,
looking out for enemies.
(Their whole job was to stay awake
while their eyes begged to close.)
In the coldest, darkest hour
a watchman's eyes kept turning east,
to where the sky would go gray, then pink, then gold.
He could not make the sun rise one minute sooner.
He could only watch for it.

"I wait for the Lord," sang the singer,
"more than watchmen wait for the morning,
yes, more than watchmen wait for the morning!"

He said it twice.
Any watchman would have understood why.

Then he turned to all God's people.
"Israel, hope in the LORD!
His love holds fast,
and he has more than enough to set us free.
He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins."

Redeem means to pay what is owed
so that someone can go free.

But the singer could not see how God would do it.
At the temple the priests offered lambs and goats
for the people's wrongs,
and every year the list grew long again.
Morning after morning the watchmen saw the sun come up,
and still the morning in the song did not come.

Then another one came,
not a watchman on the wall but the Redeemer himself,
and he went all the way down into the deep
for the singer and for all of us.
He took the whole list,
every wrong the singer was afraid of,
and when they nailed him to a cross,
God nailed that list there too and cancelled it.
He died, and they laid him in a dark tomb.

Early on the third day, while the sky was going gray, then pink, then gold,
some women came to that tomb and found it empty.
The Redeemer had come up out of the deep.
Jesus was alive,
and the watchmen's long night was over.