‘At My Wit’s End’
To ‘have your wits about you’ is an expression that means you are mentally on top of things, you are in control, you are doing fine. On the other hand, when you say, ‘I’m at my wit’s end’ you mean you are up against it, you don’t know what to do, you are lost. Many people do not know that the latter expression, to be ‘at your wit’s ned’ comes from the Bible. It describes the sailors who were with Jonah in the boat that was on its way to Tarshish. The sailors had innocently taken the prophet Jonah on board as a paying passenger. They were not to know that Jonah had offended his God, who was about to teach the prophet a lesson. It may have slipped Jonah’s mind that the God he served was the God ‘of heaven and earth and the dry land’. Jonah was running away from God, determined that he would not go to preach to the people of Nineveh as God had told him to, because Jonah was afraid that if the people of Nineveh repented God would forgive them. But God stopped Jonah in his tracks. As he slept in the hold of the ship God hurled a violent storm at the ship, so spectacular and terrifying that the sailors thought they were all going to drown. This is what could describe them: ‘Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters; they saw the deeds of the LORD, his wondrous works in the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths; their courage melted away in their evil plight; they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits’ end’ Psalm 107. 23-27. They simply did not know what to do. They had already cried out to their individual gods and received no answer. They had thrown their valuable cargo overboard to lighten the ship but nothing seemed to work. They were staring disaster in the face.
But the story doesn’t end there. The Psalm goes on to say, ‘Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven’. Now this surely has to be a clear lesson for us believers. Have you ever been at your wit’s end? Are you in a situation where you don’t know what to do, where to turn? The answer is to cry unto the Lord. Sometimes God has to bring us to our wit’s end, to the end of our tether, before we call upon Him. How sad is that! We rely on ourselves, on own strength. We want to be self-sufficient – until we run out of strength and only then do we turn to God. Let his never forget God’s telephone number. It is Jeremiah 333. That means it is Jeremiah chapter 33 and verse 3. God says, ‘Call to me and I will answer you’. Psalm 107 describes many situations where people did just that – called upon God and He answered them. Paul, too, tells us of his experience. ‘We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again’ 2 Corinthians 1.8-9. Our extremity is often God’s opportunity. Are you at your wit’s end today? Call upon God and He will answer you.