Marie* in the midst of a crowd took me to one side and said, ‘I can’t go on anymore, I just can’t do it.’ There had been too many false dawns. Each step forward was for a moment like an exhilarating rush of a wave up the beach only for the backwash of loneliness and fear to grip her soul and drag her back. How can we pray when desperation has drained us of hope? David in Psalm 6 has just that experience, ‘Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled. My soul is greatly troubled. But you, O Lord – how long.’ vv2-3 It is that question, ‘how long’, that is so hard to get beyond, not only for Marie, but today for the nation. David was God’s anointed King, from David’s line would come the Messiah and yet he knew the depths of despair. He knew what it was like to cry all night, seemingly endlessly. ‘I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears. v6 David grasps the one lifeline he knows, God’s steadfast love. ‘Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love.’ V4 It is God’s steadfast love, not our strength, that is the source of hope and that is perfectly expressed in Jesus Christ. ‘The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ Galatians 2.20
This youtube clip may help us set our hope in Him. This is my prayer for every one of our asylum seeking and refugee families with tears in my eyes.
*Marie is not her real name and is a mash up of several real people, not all are female, to protect their identity.
