Out of the depths I cry

1Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice.

2Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.

3If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?

4But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

5I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.

6I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

7Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.

8He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.

Psalm 130

Every week in October we are going to live inside one single Psalm. This week it's Psalm 130: eight short verses, written by someone who was not okay. It doesn't start with thanks or praise. It starts with a cry from a deep place. And that is exactly why it comes first: before we learn to pray beautifully, we need to know that it's possible to pray like this, from down below, with a voice that cracks.

Psalm 130 is one of the "Songs of Ascents," sung by people walking the road up to Jerusalem. Notice that its own path is a climb too: it starts in the depths (v. 1), passes through guilt (v. 3), discovers forgiveness (v. 4), learns to wait (v. 5-6), and ends with hope for everyone (v. 7-8). It's a staircase with eight steps, and this week we climb a little bit each day. Nobody skips a step. Nobody has to run.

Maybe you've come here from a deep place of your own. An old guilt you never told anyone about. A wait that never seems to end. A tiredness of the soul that a weekend doesn't fix. This Psalm has been kept for three thousand years for exactly this day. It won't ask you to pretend everything is fine. It will teach you to talk to God from where you are, and to discover that from there, too, you can climb.

Read the whole Psalm today, slowly, out loud if you can. You don't need to understand everything. Just let it introduce itself. From Tuesday to Friday we climb one step a day, one passage at a time, with a way to pray it. On Saturday, a practical guide to put its subject into practice: the guilt that won't leave you alone. And on Sunday, the week in review, with the whole Psalm explained verse by verse for anyone who wants to go deeper.