Echoes Past of Deep Calling to Deep

By Steve Wickham

Against the flow of growth, away from the pain of present, and into the pain of past I went. A pain where deep strived to again meet Deep; where deep called to Deep, and Deep answered.

I had to stop from where I was lost, to go back to a time where I'd been truly found; a time where there was nothing if not depth. This kind of season there was nothing else but depth. There was no time nor vision for superficiality. A time like this, fifteen years ago, is what God was calling me back to.

Of course, I resisted. I didn't want to plunge into my pain. I would've preferred a different, easier way. But there was no such alternative. God gave me up to my sins in order that my sins would drive me back into Him. It is God's way to reconcile us to Himself.

God has shown me a purpose to pain - that He is in the centre of that kind of storm. The Lord showed me my greatest connection of intimacy with Him, ever, was amid my darkest hour.

He showed me afresh that it was then, when I had nothing else in the world, where He was IT, and was all I had left, that He was my all - even as my depth cried out and heard the answer of Depth cry back.

It is only when we're at our depths that we can hear the cry of God's Spirit at depth - 'I love you and I am here with you and will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid.'

Only as I cried out in a lonely pitch-dark shrill, as if feeling I'd been abandoned by God, did I hear God cry back deep in my spirit. That cry of deep crying out to Deep and hearing Deep cry back has never left me.

Isn't it ironic that Deep cries back to us only when we fall to the depth of Deep?

Steve Wickham holds Degrees in Science, Divinity, and Counselling. Steve writes at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com.au/ and http://tribework.blogspot.com.au/