Out of the depths
The Slough of Despond
Early in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the hero Christian, fleeing the City of Destruction with a heavy burden on his back, blunders into a miry bog and begins to sink. Bunyan calls it the Slough of Despond — a swamp of discouragement, doubt, and despair where the fears and guilt of a convicted soul gather and ooze, and many a pilgrim has floundered, weighed down and unable to climb out.
It is a precise picture of a real spiritual experience: that sinking, sucking discouragement that grabs the soul and will not let go, where every effort to climb out only seems to mire us deeper. Bunyan, who knew profound depression himself, did not pretend the slough was avoidable; he placed it right at the start of the journey, an early and common hazard of the pilgrim road.
The psalmist cried from the same bog: out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Notice he does not wait until he has climbed out to pray; he prays from the bottom, from the depths, while still sinking. This is the way out of the slough — not a self-rescue we manage on our own, but a cry to the One who, as another psalm says, lifts us out of the miry clay and sets our feet on a rock. When you are sinking in the bog of despair, do not wait to feel better to pray. Cry out from the depths, exactly where you are.
“Out of the depths I have cried to you, the LORD.”
— The psalmist — Psalm 130:1 (WEB)
Cry out to God from the depths of discouragement — not after you have climbed out, but from the bottom of the bog, trusting him to lift you onto the rock.
“He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay. He set my feet on a rock, and gave me a firm place to stand.”
Discouragement does its worst not by sinking us but by convincing us we must be presentable before we may pray — that God receives the climbed-out, not the floundering. The interior work is to unlearn that condition: to call on him from the bottom, before any progress, on the truth that lifting from the miry clay is his act and not our self-rescue, so the cry comes up exactly where the sinking is.
This week, if discouragement has you sinking, pray from the depths rather than waiting to feel better: bring God your despair as it is, asking him to lift you onto the rock, and stop trying to thrash your own way out before you call on him.
The lie that keeps a pilgrim drowning is that he must first be clean and upright to approach God, so he thrashes alone and goes under. Yet the One who hears the cry from the very bottom is the One who sets feet on rock — and the cry, not the climbing, is what reaches him.
There is a kind of discouragement that functions exactly like a bog — Bunyan's Slough of Despond — a sinking, sucking despair that grabs hold of the soul, where every struggle to climb out by our own effort only seems to mire us deeper. It often comes early and unexpectedly on the journey, and it can make us feel that we must somehow fix ourselves before we are fit to approach God.
The psalmist shows the better way: he cries to God from the depths, not after climbing out of them. We do not have to escape the bog before we pray; we pray from the bottom of it, and it is God who lifts us out, setting our feet on a rock we could never reach by our own thrashing. So when you find yourself sinking in discouragement, resist the lie that you must climb out first. Cry out from the depths, exactly where you are, to the One who lifts pilgrims from the miry clay.
- Am I waiting until I feel better to approach God?
- Has my own thrashing only mired me deeper in discouragement?
- Can I cry out from the depths, exactly where I am?
Lord, discouragement has me sinking like a pilgrim in the bog, and I keep thrashing as if I must climb out before I can pray. Out of the depths I cry to you. Lift me from the miry clay, set my feet on the rock, and rescue me where I am. Amen.