We are praying together for those too weakened, too faint, to pray for themselves. Perhaps they have been too long deceived. Perhaps they are too full of bitterness or self-pity; it doesn’t matter how they ended up beaten and robbed and left for dead. It doesn’t matter how many have passed by on the other side of the road; we are here now.
Lord God! Almighty God! Maker of heaven and earth … Maker of us and of those we love and those for whom we care deeply … We have found You in the Sanctuary which is Christ Jesus. We pray today, we lift up these souls, _______________________________ , these wounded and Desperate Little Friends, and we ask that You would reach them as You have us, heal them, may refreshing come to them, that they will come up out of every wilderness, “leaning on the Beloved.” If You have made them thirsty or watched them slip into despair, so bring them up, O God, into fullness and life and the knowledge of Your Son. May they come to drink deeply of the Water of Life, and us with them, ever more deeply. Amen.
We will begin, not with Psalm 1, but with Psalm 63, one of the many that give us a clear understanding of why we are here and why we are praying for those too paralyzed to pray for themselves. Think of someone, one whose condition breaks your heart, the mention of whose name grips your soul, or think of the many you know, the too many hurting too desperately, and let’s pray together.
Psalm 63 speaks of the soul’s thirst for God, of the weak and fainting condition we all know when we have wandered a little too far from Him or otherwise found ourselves in a wilderness, almost too lifeless to cry out for help.
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
Not all of our Desperate Little Friends appear to be desperate. Some are still holding it together; some aren’t. Either way, this is the antidote, and this we know. The help we have found and the help they need is in the Presence of the Lord.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live;
in your name I will lift up my hands.
The thirsty souls, the fainting life, in a dry and weary land.
The married couples, young but shriveled and old in their romance, dying, as it were, on the vine.
The young people, teenagers, with dark circles under their eyes, wearied of life before they have begun to live it.
The little ones, already trusting more in manipulation than in the love and wisdom of their parents.
Other friends, older friends, lonely, forsaken, and emotionally removed from any help that might effect a change.
But in the sanctuary, if they could reach it, there is God, and His lovingkindness is better than life. If they cannot or will not come, our lips will praise and pray, and their ears will hear. A little bird will carry the matter. (Ecclesiastes 10:20). When we speak, the Word of the Lord will not return void to Him. (Isaiah 55:11). It doesn’t! It won’t! And the depths of our caring will touch more than the hem of His garment … it will touch His heart.
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