Out of the Depths

The kitten’s piteous meowing sounded weak. 

It had fallen down an old well in our yard. My son carefully removed the sheets of corrugated metal and peered into the grimy blackness.

“It’s so far down,” he said. “I’m not sure I can get it out.”

As one of my daughters went for a long-handled net, I remembered a time I had heard a child’s piteous sobbing from a trash can. The six year old hadn’t been too far to reach physically, but emotional rescue was another story.

That scene played behind my eyes as my daughter handed the net to my son. He laid on his belly and held the net in both hands as he stretched down into the well. I couldn’t even see the kitten, but I could hear it.

The six year old boy is eighteen now, and I think of him often. It wasn’t long ago that he came and talked to me about some trouble he’d gotten into. He wanted to do better. He had no permanent residence, no parent who cared, and no plan for the future. Accepting help was complicated. It’s difficult to want to be pulled from the trash can if you’re worrying about what you will look like in the daylight.

The kitten didn’t care. The six year old hadn’t cared either, but the eighteen year old version of him did. I haven’t seen him now for two months. 

I never fell into a well or sought warmth in a trash can, but the pit of sin is equally deep for us all. We’ve all fallen in, and we make our own efforts to get out again. We all fear the shame that coming to the surface will reveal.

In his excellent work Jayber Crow, author Wendell Berry writes about a man out hunting who fell into a well: “He looks up and sees how far down he has come. The sky that was so large and reassuring only seconds ago is now just a small blue picture of itself, far away. His first thought is that he is alone, that nobody knows where he is… He calls out… and he hears himself enclosed within the sound of his own calling voice.”

We can try everything to rescue ourselves out of the well of sin we’ve fallen into, to save the embarrassment of someone else seeing our disgusting plight. Eventually, even our humble call for another to come to our rescue becomes its own prison. We can’t get out.

Perhaps that’s how the Psalmist felt when he wrote: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! O Lord, hear my voice!” 

Our cries aren’t hollow echoes when they ascend to the ears of One who is abundantly able to rescue. With Him is steadfast love. With Him is plentiful redemption. 

My son scooped the kitten up in the net and pulled it slowly to the surface. Even though grime dripped from it, he took it lovingly in his hands, out of the well, out of the net, and wrapped it in a towel. He smiled. 

*This article is published in the Oct. 16, 2025 edition of the Devils Lake Journal.