Drowning

The Drowning Artist, Linnea Strid

Psalm 69

Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
Where there is no standing;
I have come into deep waters,
Where the floods overflow me.
I am weary with my crying;
My throat is dry;
My eyes fail while I wait for my God.
Those who hate me without a cause
Are more than the hairs of my head;
They are mighty who would destroy me,
Being my enemies wrongfully;
Though I have stolen nothing,
I still must restore it.

O God, You know my foolishness;
And my sins are not hidden from You.
Let not those who wait for You, O Lord GOD of hosts, be ashamed because of me;
Let not those who seek You be confounded because of me, O God of Israel.
Because for Your sake I have borne reproach;
Shame has covered my face.
I have become a stranger to my brothers,
And an alien to my mother’s children;
Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up,
And the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.
When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting,
That became my reproach.
I also made sackcloth my garment;
I became a byword to them.
Those who sit in the gate speak against me,
And I am the song of the drunkards.

But as for me, my prayer is to You,
O Lord, in the acceptable time;
O God, in the multitude of Your mercy,
Hear me in the truth of Your salvation.
Deliver me out of the mire,
And let me not sink;
Let me be delivered from those who hate me,
And out of the deep waters.
Let not the floodwater overflow me,
Nor let the deep swallow me up;
And let not the pit shut its mouth on me.

Hear me, O Lord, for Your lovingkindness is good;
Turn to me according to the multitude of Your tender mercies.
And do not hide Your face from Your servant,
For I am in trouble;
Hear me speedily.
Draw near to my soul, and redeem it;
Deliver me because of my enemies.

You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor;
My adversaries are all before You.
Reproach has broken my heart,
And I am full of heaviness;
I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none;
And for comforters, but I found none.
They also gave me gall for my food,
And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

Let their table become a snare before them,
And their well-being a trap.
Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see;
And make their loins shake continually.
Pour out Your indignation upon them,
And let Your wrathful anger take hold of them.
Let their dwelling place be desolate;
Let no one live in their tents.
For they persecute the ones You have struck,
And talk of the grief of those You have wounded.
Add iniquity to their iniquity,
And let them not come into Your righteousness.
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living,
And not be written with the righteous.

But I am poor and sorrowful;
Let Your salvation, O God, set me up on high.
I will praise the name of God with a song,
And will magnify Him with thanksgiving.
This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bull,
Which has horns and hooves.
The humble shall see this and be glad;
And you who seek God, your hearts shall live.
For the Lord hears the poor,
And does not despise His prisoners.

Let heaven and earth praise Him,
The seas and everything that moves in them.
For God will save Zion
And build the cities of Judah,
That they may dwell there and possess it.
Also, the descendants of His servants shall inherit it,
And those who love His name shall dwell in it


Sometimes you just can't stay afloat...

That's what drowning is. For one reason or another you find yourself overcome by the current and you cannot save yourself. Why am I talking about this morbid subject? Well because in this Psalm David talks about drowning. He actually writes about a lot of things in this lengthy Psalm but he talks about drowning twice. When he repeats the drowning motif you realize that this is a song and he is establishing a "hook." You know, that's the young folks word for a chorus. And when you look at it again in the terms of the hook I realized that the whole song was about drowning. Ironically a hook is what David could have used. Specifically the hook on the end of a shepherd's staff. No doubt he had used it many times before, in his former life as a shepherd, to save sheep who had slipped into the deep. Now the former shepherd was a king and he needed saving of his own.

I'm Erasing You, Linnea Strid

King David was drowning. Psalm 69is not just about drowning in water but about drowning in "mire." What is mire? Well ask your nearest elderly deacon and he will tell you that mire basically means mud... and slush... things that lead you to sink deeper and deeper. Land that betrays you and reveals its liquid tendencies. Mire is that mud on the banks of a river that a sheep may have stood on to get a sip from the water. Then they realize that this seemingly stable ground had ensnared them. It's like that quicksand episode that every cartoon and family sitcom from the 70's and 80's had to include..."Oh no Scooby and Shaggy, apparently you've stumbled into quicksand for the 415th time!" But when David speaks about drowning in water and sinking in mire he is alluding to an even more vile danger: Sinking into sin. Not just any sin but drowning in addictive sins. Becoming engulfed by iniquitous relationships, like the adulterous one that he orchestrated with Bathsheba. Falling into problems that shame you and ensnare those who surround you, like David's plot to murder Bathsheba's to cover us her and David's child. Maybe you've been there. Maybe you were lucky enough to have had a spiritual Indiana Jones there to save you from this sand pit. Maybe you are still there slowly sinking until you find yourself fully submerged in it. 

Transforming, Linnea Strid

If you do find yourself slowly being submerged then the answer is to surrender and be immersed. The first step of faith in Christ is belief but the second step is immersion. I am obviously alluding to baptism. And why wouldn't I? As a Baptist I belong to a group that named itself after the act. If you look through this verse about sin, shame and drowning you may also notice verses that Christians look to as foreshadowing of Christ's crucifixion and death. Even though David's iniquities came hundreds of years before Christ's sacrifice, his hope for mercy would be intertwined in Christ's actions. That is because all of God's mercy in history past and history future was tied to Christ's taking upon humanity's collective sin... Soooo, what does this have to do with baptism? Well St. Paul will later identify our Christian rite of baptism with Jesus' sacrificial death. As you hold your nose and are lowered by a minister into a pool of water, Paul says it parallels Jesus' being lowered into the grave... both are done to wash away sins. You may have heard it referred to as the "liquid grave." As you arise from the water you parallel Christ's arising from the dead, both having shed the dirt of sin. Paul spoke this way because Christians didn't invent baptism per se, they just imbued it with renewed meaning. And no, the Baptists didn't invent baptism either. This is another ritual that we inherited from Judaism. In Judaism it is referred to as a "Mikveh", a purification ritual. It is heavily practiced in Orthodox and Conservative Jewish congregations. There are several reasons to have a Mikveh performed, but the one that closely resembles Christian baptism is for conversion to Judaism. In biblical times the most famous proponent of Mikvehs for conversion was a desert prophet named John the Baptist (who also happened to be Jesus' cousin). His argument for this spiritual cleansing however was to people who had probably already converted to Judaism. They actually had probably been Jewish from birth and some of them were Pharisees and Priests in the temple in Jerusalem. John the Baptist's notion was that they were converted externally but not internally. Conversion is not just a matter baptizing the body but also baptizing the heart. Even if you have been baptized there are times when we must analyze our ways and thoughts to discover if we are truly spiritually cleansed. If we are honest with ourselves we may realize that we are often far from purity. We may realize that just like David, we are adults who have gone through all of the religious rites required of our youth but have now sunken into sin. We have gone from being immersed in baptismal waters to engulfed in sin. 

If that is your case then take confidence in the fact that you have hope in Christ. This hope cannot be drowned because this hope floats. This is the hope of spiritual breath that relieves on of sin's suffocation. No, baptism is not a magic bath. As a Baptist I don't actually believe their is any salvific power in the act of baptism itself. However their is power in the internal spiritual conversion that it symbolizes. A conversion that you may need to have repeatedly to varying degrees several times over in your life. Baptism is an outward sign of an inward change. It shows that you personally relate with Christ's sacrificial act. If you haven't made this internal change then you may have pulled the wool over your own eyes. Even if you didn't realize this at the point of your baptism, there is still time now to make an actual spiritual conversion. This is the hope of Christianity: that you can always surrender to the Holy Spirit's baptism of your heart. This is the hope of wayward sheep who long to be saved by the Good Shepherd.