Out of the Pit

When I was a teenager, I spent my summers working on a ranch in East Texas. The ranch manager, Jimmie, was a big, strapping guy with limited eyesight who knew how to do all sorts of things. For instance, he taught me how to mow and haul hay.

One day, we shoveled dirt into a six-foot-deep hole for a well. During a water break, Jimmie misjudged where the hole was and stepped toward it. My mouth was too full of water to warn him, and he fell in! I feared he might have broken a limb from the deep drop, and I instantly scrambled to help. When I looked up, though, Jimmie casually climbed out of the hole as if nothing had happened.

That was Jimmie’s life. He was a guy with several pits in front of him daily because not only was he losing his eyesight, but he was also losing his hearing. Yet Jimmie climbed out of every pit he fell into and kept moving ahead. He is an example of faith for everyone in Christ’s body. We all have pits we fall into. It is a part of life, but God’s Word shows us that as Christians, we must face our pits through the eyes of faith.

Maybe you are stuck in a pit right now. It could be a difficult relationship, a financial hole, an illness, or something else you’ve been caught in for a while, and you wonder if you’ll ever be able to climb out. Your once close walk with Christ seems like a distant dream.

One type of pit is the kind we create for ourselves. We may fall back into an old sin habit or unhealthy life pattern that keeps us going in circles. We find ourselves drifting, wandering, and moving farther away from the abundant life God has provided.

However, it does not matter what kind of pit we are in. Our merciful Lord makes a way for us out of every one of them. “Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out?” (Matthew 12:11, ESV). Jesus says, “It doesn’t matter if you created your pit. Even the law won’t stop me from coming to lift you out of it.”