I’ll never forget my fifth-grade year at school.  It was only my second year at Charlotte Country Day but it was my first at their new “middle school campus.”  It wasn’t a particularly great year, there were bullies and teasing that wasn’t much fun, but there was one highlight of that particular year, “School in the Woods.”  School in the Woods was a yearly experience that began in the Fifth grade and lasted throughout middle school.  During School in the Woods, the entire grade was taken to a campground, like Camp Thunderbird, where we would live together for several days and participate in lots of group-building activities.  I don’t remember quite where we were that particular year, I want to say Thunderbird but I’m not entirely certain.  Anyway, on the first full day of the camp we were summoned in our small groups to a place where a large tree stump lay.  The stump was large and elevated above the ground by several feet or so.  It seemed relatively innocuous until the counsellors told us what we were going to have to do.  They explained to us that we were going to do a trust fall.  What that entailed was that one of us would stand upon that tree stump, with our back toward the assembled group down below.  The people on the ground, all linked their arms together, facing one another.  Then, we were told what would happen next.  The person standing on the tree stump would winging fall backwards.  I mean free fall backwards.  Thankfully, of course, they’d be caught by the outstretched arms of the people below them.

What makes the experience stand out in my mind so vividly is that for some strange quirk of circumstance, I was selected to go first on the tree stump.  Now consider this, that trust fall becomes a whole lot more palatable when you see it done a few times.  Just watching a few other people get caught goes a long way towards easting your mind that, as you fall backwards, that you’re going to be caught.  I didn’t have that luxury.  So, there I was, I must’ve been like 10 or 11 years old.  I’m standing on a tree stump several feet above the group.  There’s someone telling me that I need to fall backwards into the arms of people I hardly knew.  Let me just say this, it took me several moments and a lot of cajoling to do it.  But I did it.  And, yes, they did catch me.

You know, the more and more I live this thing called life, I find that my life takes me to plenty of places just like standing on that tree stump so many years ago.  After all, the future is unknown and, in its uncertainty, always hair raising.  We don’t know quite what lies in tomorrow but, given all that we’ve seen, we’re not sure we want to find out, right?

What can make those hours on the stump even more unbearable is a lack of faith.  When we don’t know or, worse still, don’t trust whatever it is that’s supposed to catch us, our fears amplify and we freeze, uncertain of what to do next.  But one thing’s for certain, you can’t live your life very successfully or very productively, cowering on a tree stump, unable to move.

Psalm 40 speaks to us about a time in David’s life where things weren’t all hunky dory.  David, as we’ll remember, is a remarkable man of God.  He’s God’s anointed successor to lead His people following the debacle that was Saul.  David is known to be a great man of God with a great heart for serving the Lord.  But even though he was selected by God for leadership, it isn’t the case that David had an easy, placid life.  No, for quite some time he was on the run from Saul and, even after that, witnessed many battles and experienced great challenges.  Throughout it all, David maintained his faith towards God and saw it grow.

An even though our lives are different, we all find ourselves in difficult times, uncertain of what to do next.  There are medical diagnoses that keep us up at night, difficulties within our families that are beyond hair-raising.  Then there are the worries about the world and our loves one that always keep bubbling to the surface to say nothing of real times of crisis.  It doesn’t matter what it is, we all reach those moments on top of the tree stump.

David likely wrote Psalm 40 on the run, in exile or perhaps in the earliest days of his kinghood.  Either way, they were dark and difficult days.  We know that because he refers to them as a slimy pit.  And sometimes, as mixed as the metaphor may be, we’re both in a pit and on a tree stump at the same darned time.

I’ll never forget around that same time, I went to a baseball camp.  It was one there at the school and it was a day camp.  Suring my time there, they made an announcement about our activities on Thursdays.  We were specifically told to bring a change of clothes, that we were going to be getting dirty.  Well, I was as good then as I am now at paying attention which is to say, no so great.  Believe it or not, I missed that message and arrived that fateful day without a change of clothes.  The reason that we were tasked with doing so is that on that particular day, we were going to practice sliding.  And the best way to do that, minimizing the danger of injury?  Well, in order to do that, you wet the field and make it, you guessed it, really muddy.  Mud slides more easily, I guess.  So that’s what we did.  We practiced sliding in the mud all day.  It was fun…at first. Then, as the Carolina heat rises, that mud starts to dry and the flies begin buzzing around and you’re sweaty and feel caked in dirt.  I know, it wasn’t a good feeling made worse by the fact that I didn’t have any clothes to change in to.