Pulled from the Mud on Highway 9

In March 2019, a farmer named Dale Rusk was driving his pickup along a back road outside Luverne, Minnesota, when spring floodwaters surged across the blacktop and swept his truck into a drainage ditch. The cab filled with freezing brown water up to his chest. Dale tried to open the door, but the current pinned it shut. He tried the window — it wouldn't budge. For forty-five minutes, he sat in that rising water, unable to do anything but wait.

A passing school bus driver named Maria Gonzalez spotted the truck's roof barely visible above the waterline. She radioed for help, then waded in herself with a tow strap. When rescuers finally pried Dale's door open, he couldn't stop shaking — not just from the cold, but from the overwhelming relief of being found.

At his church the following Sunday, Dale stood before the congregation and said something no one forgot: "I didn't save myself. I couldn't even crack a window. All I could do was wait and hope somebody would come."

That is the testimony of Psalm 40. David cried out from the miry clay, and the Lord — not David's own strength, not his cleverness — reached down, pulled him out, and set his feet on solid rock. The waiting was agonizing. But the rescue was complete. And what came next was a new song, sung not in private, but before the whole assembly: "He heard my cry."