When All You Can Do Is Pray

I worked in the nursery at church today.  I just started helping out and love having the opportunity to care for, bless, sing to, and pray for those tiny precious children.  A lady came in to change a diaper and the children’s pastor in the nursery asked her who’s baby it was.  It was a foster baby they just took in.  He came to them straight from the hospital and his head is misshapen from the beatings he endured.  

He is 6 months old.
 

I was in a women’s meeting the other day.  We spoke about our fears.  Among our fears of babies getting fevers, and financial difficulties a few women began to share about their marriages being on the brink of disaster.  

Drinking and possible divorce.
 

I got an email from a friend on Friday.  I didn’t know she had a brother who lived in a foreign country with his family.  Egypt is in the midst of revolt.  

He lives in Cairo.
 

When we took Josiah to the ER the other day to get some staples someone rolled a young man into the ER in a wheelchair as we were walking out.  He was bleeding and in really bad shape.  We couldn’t tell if he’d been shot, beaten, or in an accident.  As we got the boys into their carseats we saw the people who pushed him in running to their car and speed away.  

Leaving him alone.
 

These are just a few examples of the need my eyes have been opened to in the past few weeks.  So many times I find myself lacking in words and resources to help.  And I find that all I can do is pray.
 
When what I have and who I am just isn’t enough.  When I don’t have the answers.  I can run to the one who does.  I can run to the one who is. 
 

And I pray.

 
When life is heavy and hard to take, 
   go off by yourself. Enter the silence.
Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions: 
   Wait for hope to appear.
Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face. 
   The "worst" is never the worst.
 
Lamentations 3:28-30

 
 . . . The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with.
 
James 5:16