Languishing in the cistern:
Bruised, bewildered and betrayed,
Joseph waiting in confused darkness.
What had he done to deserve this?
His own flesh and blood turned on him,
Smiling faces turned hooded,
Malevolence and spite overpowering in their force.
Injustice mingled with indignity,
Confusion reigning in the chaos,
The ordinary day forever ripped apart,
Confidence crushed, arrogance abrogated.
Rotting in the belly of a great fish,
Smelling the decaying digestion,
Strangled by slimy seaweed,
Stinking seawater threatening to fill his lungs,
Jonah cried out to the Lord in his distress.
His own disobedience and folly gripping his heart more strongly than the whirling weeds,
A cry for help and deliverance his only hope.
Stuck in the mud,
Sinking fast in its glutinous mess,
Jeremiah bore the pain of rejection.
Spurned by officials for speaking the truth,
Banished to the depths,
A prophet’s fate no easy lot.
This is all the thanks I get for speaking the word of the Lord?!
Cisterns.
Fish.
Wells.
Holes.
Unlikely places for encounters with the Holy.
Dank, dark, miserable places.
Fighting-for-your-life places.
Vomit-inducing, stomach-heaving, malodorous cesspits of
Betrayal.
Greed.
Indignity.
Injustice.
Yet these were revelatory rendez-vous,
Transforming turning points,
Significant signposts on the journey of faith.
No place too lowly for God’s downward reach.
No place too lowly for a cry to ring out.
Out of the depths we cry to You.
(Scripture references: Genesis 37, Jonah 2, Jeremiah 38, Psalm 130)