Psalms 40:2 Meaning He Brought Me Up Also Out

The pit and the miry clay are the human skull, the brain-bound state where the dreamer lies fixed and stuck, held in the mud of one settled self-concept he cannot seem to shift. To be brought up out of it is to be lifted from that fixed belief into a new assumption, released from the clay that held the feet motionless. Nothing outside pulls a person up. The lift is the change of state, the moving from the old identity to the desired one.

The rock is the imagination, the firm ground a person stands on once he has found it, the one dependable footing under a shifting world. Feet set on that rock are a self-planted in the fulfilled state rather than sunk in lack. Established goings follow naturally: with the assumption fixed and steady, the outer steps fall into an ordered path. A person's course settles the moment his footing does, once he stands within the imagined state instead of the mire of what he was.

A man sinks into the formless before he is ever set on solid ground. The pit is the abyss that opens when meaning collapses, and the clay is the swamp that pulls at every step and lets him get nowhere. He cannot climb out by wanting to. Something above him has to reach down and lift.

Then comes the rock, and the rock is order, a footing that will bear weight and not shift when he stands on it. His goings are established, which is to say his movement recovers a direction after the long confusion. To be rescued is to trade the mire for a place to stand and a way to walk. A man restored is one who can aim at something again and go there.

The pit is that state where nothing holds, where every effort slides in the mud and a person struggles harder only to sink further. The self-image in that clay expects to slip, and so it does, because the mind delivers whatever picture it is handed.

The lift comes, and with it firm ground underfoot, a footing that no longer gives way. Once a person stands on something solid, the walking steadies on its own and the steps stop wandering. The ground under the picture changed. A man who feels the rock take his weight moves forward sure of each step, where before he could only flounder.