Rock Bottom

Have you ever been to “rock bottom”? It’s not a bar or a city (although it might be a cool name for either); you’ll never find it on a map or locate it on the GPS. Rock bottom is not a specific location, but more a state of mind. The idea of “rock bottom” is can be difficult, although other people can recognize that you are on your way, no one can tell you when you’ve arrived. The only person who truly knows when you arrive is you—and that can, on occasion, take some time.

As I was putting the finishing touches on this week’s sermon, “A Prayer in the Darkness”, I thought about Jonah and his journey that found him in the belly of a sea creature at the bottom of the sea. As I stated earlier, one of the biggest problems about rock bottom is that you don’t know you are there until you get there—I got to think that if you find yourself in the belly of anything at the bottom of the sea, you have pretty much hit “rock bottom”.

I believe, as I read through Jonah’s own account of his time in the belly of the “fish” (see Jonah 2), that he recognized his situation as being, pretty much the worst case scenario. I don’t think that Jonah ever planned on ending up in his precarious situation when he elected to ignore (or rather run in the complete opposite direction) God’s instruction. No doubt if anyone would have told him this would be the end result of his decision he would have thought long and hard (after realizing of course that they were serious) about his choices and their consequences.  

I think a lot of us find ourselves at rock bottom, not all at once (although it can happen that way—just ask Jonah), but in a gradual, slowly progressing decline. We wake up one morning in the town of “Rock Bottom”, population: you. What then? If we are like most people our normal reaction is shock and dismay. We ask, “How did this happen?” “What went wrong?” The truth is we had been heading down the path to rock bottom for a long time, and although we thought the path was unmarked when we view our journey from the bottom back up we recognize the warning signs that were plastered along the way. We think back to that conversation with a concerned loved one or friend. We were positive that they were wrong. That they simply didn’t understand our particular situation—or they were simply busy bodies medalling in your business. Whatever excuse we came up with, we chose to ignore the signs…and here we are.

What now? What is our reaction when we hit rock bottom? Hopefully it will be like that of Jonah, who realizing his own faults and helplessness, cried out to God. Sometimes it takes going to “rock bottom” before we realize how much God truly cares for us and more importantly how much we truly need Him. Salvation is near, even for those of us who are at rock bottom. You see God is always near—no situation or circumstance is too far out of His reach, and salvation as Jonah reminds us is from the Lord!