“When in the hour of utmost need / We know not where to look for aid;
When days and nights of anxious thought / No help or counsel yet have brought.”
Doesn’t that describe us today? Death tolls continue to rise. Imposed isolation is increasing mental health problems. Unemployment is reaching Great Depressions levels. Emotionally we have but two options, despair or hope. Despair overwhelms us so we see no way forward. Hope acknowledges how bad things are but sees a way forward, Someone to Whom we can go.
“Then is our comfort this alone / That we may meet before Your throne;
To You, O faithful God, we cry / For rescue in our misery.
Notice the plurals. You and I are isolated but we are still together before God’s throne. All you who are reading this Minute, I who wrote it, all of us are together before the throne. Because there’s no distance in prayer, we are relearning the togetherness of being the Church.
“For You have promised, Lord, to heed / Your children’s cries in time of need
Through Him whose name along is great, / Our Savior and our advocate.
“And so we come, O God, today / And all our woes before You lay;
For sorely tried, cast down, we stand, / Perplexed by fears on ev’r hand.
God hears us, hears our spoken prayers, hears our unspoken fears, hears our crying hearts. He hears because His beloved Son Jesus has taken all our woes upon Himself so that we might have life and immortality. The One who created and redeemed us is faithful. He keeps His promises. “He cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 3:13). “If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come” (Habakkuk 2:3).
“So we with all our hearts each day / To You our glad thanksgiving pay,
Then walk obedient to Your Word, / And now and ever praise You Lord.”
This hymn was written in the 16th century by Paul Eber. The eloquence of the ages offers us hope today. (Lutheran Service Book, 615)
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