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“I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” –– Psalm 121
Help! When expressed as a plea rather than an imperative, it is a nearly perfect one word prayer, only surpassed by its essential sibling –– Thanks.
Help! With one word, petitioners expose the illusion of self-sufficiency and acknowledge our own finitude. With one word I profess the belief that there is help out there to receive beyond my own mind, hands, feet, and strength. With one word I acknowledge the indispensable role of community and relationship. With one word I humble myself before the paradox of the Divine, the transcendence and immanence of God. With one word I trust that the God who threw the stars across the universe chooses to channel God’s immeasurable grace through ordinary earthbound angels with broken wings and flawed spirits.
Help! The phone rang late one night, at an hour when pastors intuitively know that such rings are but a prelude to bad news. Someone has died, or is about to. It is a relatively infrequent, and yet familiar phone call for pastors who’ve had enough experience to know the hours you can only access the hospital through the emergency room. However, that this call was wholly unexpected could be seen in the terrorized tears of my wife. There had been a tragic accident. Her father had been crushed under the weight of his tractor as he was changing a tire, a task he had performed repeatedly since the days of his youth. That his death was instantaneous was small consolation in the shock of the moment.
I knew Donna had to get to her mother’s side, and I knew I could not let her drive the hour and a half route, on a rural two-lane highway, to the family farm. I also knew that we had two young boys asleep upstairs, too young to be left alone, and perhaps too young to respond to such tragedy without any time to process it.
Help! As relatively new arrivals to the city, whose night do you interrupt and inconvenience, knowing most families in the church also had sleeping children they could not leave alone and unawares. We hadn’t been there long enough to establish that depth of friendship. So, I called our new associate pastor who was just settling into her first apartment. “I’m sorry to wake you. Listen, we’ve got a problem…” Katie was at our door within fifteen minutes. There was no time for small talk. We just let her in as we bolted for the car. We made it to the farm and the family was reunited in each other’s embrace, their foundations rocked, but their love strong.
When I returned home some four hours after leaving, Katie was still holding vigil, all calm, cool, and collected in contrast to my frenzied confusion. The boys were fast asleep upstairs, not yet fully comprehending the trauma they would encounter in the morrow, but still safe, watched over, and at peace.
“I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” It is so often in spontaneous gestures of kindness that this truth is experienced. What would strike many as an inconvenience is merely being true to a calling for those with faith fueled compassion. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another,” is the way Jesus phrased it. In a stormy sea, Katie provided oars for our fragile boat so that we could move forward, and the Lord provided Katie. Thanks be to our Lord for the instruments of God’s peace, who sometimes appear as a familiar face at a troubled parent’s door. Help indeed.
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