Stuck

Not too long ago I was looking through some old photos a friend posted on facebook. I came across the one to the right and I begin to think about that crazy night. The photo was taken around 1986 and yes those are acid washed jeans under all that mud!

Have you ever noticed that when guys get bored they tend to do stupid things, they come of with what they think are really good ideas but they usually end up being really bad ideas. Well that is exactly what happened that night. We were sitting around a friend's apartment doing who knows what but we were bored. We did not have cell phones, we did not have the internet, we did not have facebook and we only had about 20 cable channels. I know some of you younger readers are wondering how we survived without these things.

As I mentioned, we were bored and one of us came up with the brilliant idea of going to see the Bingham Light. It is a famous haunt. You can read all about it here. Unfortunately in order to get to the light you had to travel down some less than perfect roads. My buddy Jack had a 1980 something 4X4 turbo diesel Ford Ranger. He swore that it could get through anything. Apparently "anything" didn't mean a mud hole that had been worn away by logging trucks so that the bottom of the truck would get stuck. Now one key element that I did not mention is that the Bingham light is about 30 miles from the apartment we were hanging out at and the area where we got stuck is about four miles from nowhere. We were deep in the woods. I also failed to mention that we did not leave the apartment until around 9 or 10 o'clock that evening. The mud hole took it's victims captive around 11:00 that evening. We thought about spending the night in the woods, in the bed of the truck in the hopes that some other fools would show up and help us out.

Around midnight and after hearing all sorts of sounds and wondering if there were any axe murders in the area we decided to hike out and try to find a pay phone to call for help. Around 3:00 in the morning we finally made it to an old gas station where we dropped a quarter in the pay phone and called our smart friend (because he did not go with us) Chris to come pick us up. After listening to him cuss us out for waking him up he reluctantly came and brought us home where we were able to get another 4X4 and get the truck out of the mud. Needless to say our clothes (my acid washed jeans) were ruined and we smelled like road kill but we made it home.

As I thought about this I had a verse come to mind.

Psalm 40:2 - He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

In my story me and my friends were stuck, we tried everything we could to get the truck out of the mud but nothing worked. We had to have someone outside of our situation come to our rescue. The same is true spiritually speaking. The Bible says we were dead in our sins, that there was nothing we could do to save ourselves but God in his mercy sent someone who could rescue us from the muck and mud called sin:

Ephesians 2: 1-9 - 1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Whether we realize it or not we are, or at some point were, stuck in the mud. We are/were helpless and need someone outside of our situation to show up and get us out. Christ did that at the cross. Christ has fulfilled the requirements of God. Christ lived the life we could never live and his sacrifice was sufficient. We can continue in the mud trying to get ourselves out or we can rest in his finished work, we can believe that he is who he said he was, the son of God, the lamb without blemish who took away the sins of the world.