God, Please Help (Friday Devotional)

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. 

- Colossians 4:2

Every time an ambulance speeds past, I can count on hearing two things. The first, naturally, is the siren. But the second sound is the quiet voice of my daughter Katherine in the backseat.

“Dear God, please help the people where the ambulance is going. Amen.”

The origin of this prayer comes from a day, years ago, when Katherine had a lot of questions after an ambulance drove by. Who were they going to help? What was wrong with the person? What were the paramedics going to do when they got there?

At the time, we told Katherine we didn’t have the answers to her questions, nor did we have a way to find out those answers. But what we told her we could do was pray for the people in need and for the paramedics seeking to help them. And so, without fail or hesitation, she does so every time she hears a siren screaming.

There are times when, even as adults, we find ourselves like Katherine in the backseat, filled with questions and concerns but no answers. Grown-ups like to imagine we can solve all our problems on our own, but life has a way of disabusing us of that notion. Sometimes you just don’t know what to do.

In such moments of confusion and disorder, the best thing to do is to turn to the one who has the answers we don’t, offering the simple prayer that has sustained God’s people since the beginning: “God, please help.”

Such a prayer won’t necessarily result in God intervening to solve your problem for you. Praise the Lord when he does, but it’s not exactly the point. Prayer is simply your acknowledgement that you are not sovereign over all things—and that you know who is. It’s an act of trust.

So today, let me encourage you to turn your anxieties, whatever they may be, over to God. You don’t have all the answers, and you may not get them. But there’s something humble, something faithful, and something powerful about looking to the Lord, and simply saying, “God, please help.”