In 2018, I wrote a blog about a pit. I talked about how some situations (even some relationships) drag you down to such a degree that it makes life feel very dark. You feel trapped. Sometimes it’s even hard to breathe. You sit in the depths and look up at the light. And it seems impossible that you’ll ever live in it again.
Recently God brought this old blog to mind again. Parts of me are still in that pit all these years later. But for the most part He’s pulled me out of it.
Recalling that blog was a reminder of the great work God has done in my life (and is continuing to do). But that’s not all the Lord wanted me to understand.
First He reminded me that I was not the only one to ever sit in a pit. As I leafed through the Word I was reminded of the story of Joseph in Genesis — whose brothers quite literally threw him in a pit before selling him to traders. I’ve always had an affinity for that story.
But Joseph wasn’t the only one. There were many other biblical figures who were dragged down to to a pit kind of low, too. Job, Moses, King David, St. Paul, and St. Peter. The list goes on.
What’s interesting is that these people also reached great heights with God, too. I started to notice a pattern — the lower the pit, the higher the mountaintop to which the Lord was calling them.
I sat with this for quite awhile. If a soul is chosen for God’s purposes why does He leave them to struggle in a pit?
The answer is found in a seed.
We experience the pits of life because they are necessary for our growth.
Like a seed that is pushed deep into the ground, that senses the light above, but has to do its own struggling to break forth into it… so too a chosen soul is brought low and must struggle.
Like a seed that in time breaks open in darkness and hiddenness, so too the soul in God’s grace breaks open in the pit.
Like a seed that is watered by rain and nourished by dirt, so too the soul receives the Spirit of God that pours out from the Heavens… and it is strangely nourished by the mire of life’s woes.
All this somehow causes a sort or sprouting within the soul. A new beginning. The start of new life. In the very lowness and darkness of life.
And God watches. Like the good gardener His eyes never leave the soul. He waters it. He smiles. He awaits the day where it will climb out from the depths, break ground, and enter the light.
He awaits for the day when that magnificent tree that will stretch out into the sky… being planted in earth but in many ways living in the heights of Heaven with Him.
He awaits the day when that soul will bear so much fruit that it will feed a multitude of starving souls.
My friend, if you are feeling like you’re in a pit, and wondering why God has allowed it, He’s showing you what kind of soul you are. You are a chosen one. You are called to heights of Lebanon like a great cedar.
I think this is a perfect message for today, Holy Saturday. The day when our Lord Himself was put into the earth, in a tomb, and all the earth waited… for the moment He would break out from the burial cloths and roll away the stone.
We know the story. Resurrection is coming. And yours is too, little seed. Just wait….
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