UP & OUT
Today's reading: Jeremiah 37-41

Pits. Puddles. Depressions. Holes. Cisterns. Burrow. Ditch. Crater. Abyss.

I'm not sure what you're calling 'the sunken area forming a separate place', but we've all been in one. It may be one of your own making or a spot someone else, or someone else's actions, have thrown you into to.

Regardless of how you ended up there, how are you choosing to get out?

A miraculous delivery? Possible, we serve an amazingly awesome God.

A simple exit? I guess there's a chance of it, a slim chance.

A steep, exhausting, get-your-hands-dirty, need to depend a bit on another attempt? Yes, that's probably what it will take.

Oh, don't let that announcement bother you. It's happened to the best of God's men!

"So Ebed-melech took the men with him and went to a room in the palace beneath the treasury, where he found some old rags and discarded clothing. He carried these to the cistern and lowered them to Jeremiah on a rope. Ebed-melech called down to Jeremiah, Put these rags under your armpits to protect you from the ropes. Then when Jeremiah was ready, they pulled him out..." Jeremiah 38:11-13 NLT

A man of God wasn't angelically hoisted from his pit. A man of God wasn't able to 'pray' himself out. A man of God was not simply and effortlessly transported from the well to the side of the king.

No, he had friends. He had a God who moved His friends into action. He had the humility to accept help. He had eyes open to an opportunity that might have looked a little different than what he'd expected. He had his issues of pride pushed to the side and was willing to stuff those musty, wrinkled hand-me-downs under his armpits and be pulled up by friends who were in a better place than he.

I'll go ahead and ask you what God asked me--what do you have at your disposal to help you get out of your 'pit'? Who has God placed in your path? What has He provided? How will you allow Him to help you?

Up and out is where I want to be. Will I use everything He has placed at my fingertips to get there?