Ten lords a-leaping?

But God hears our cries for help

Psalm 145:19-20 The Lord grants the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them. The Lord protects all those who love him.

Matthew 28:20 [Jesus said] “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

Luke 6:46-48 “Why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord!’ when you don’t do what I say? I will show you what it’s like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then follows it. It is like a person building a house who digs deep and lays the foundation on solid rock. When the floodwaters rise and break against that house, it stands firm.”

1 Peter 1:6 There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while.

The image that comes to mind is comical. I picture a game of leapfrog, with the ten lords in all their finery becoming ever more disheveled and wet as they fall in the grass sodden and muddy from all the rain we’ve been having.

And that reminds me of my then three-year-old grandson slipping and falling in mud. When I heard his cries and went to rescue him, I slipped too, and we were both lying there covered in mud and with no apparent way to clean ourselves up enough to get in the car and go home from the park.

On this tenth day of Christmas, the last thing I feel I need is ten lords a-leaping. I need only one Lord who hears my cries for help and rescues me. For my heart is shattered with a loss I can’t describe to you. Maybe that’s OK, because your heartache is different from mine, and I want you to hear this word of comfort from Psalm 145 through the lens of your own grief or need.

Wait a minute! you may be thinking. I don’t see the Lord granting my desires or rescuing and protecting me. I feel like God has forgotten me, or maybe, with the world in such a mess, he doesn’t care about my concerns. I’m like that crying three-year-old lying cold in the mud.

I hear you. Sometimes nothing makes sense, even words of comfort like these words from Psalm 145. Sometimes the Lord rescues us in ways we don’t understand until much later.

I’ve gone through a lot of trouble and anguish in my life, and what I want to tell you, even in my own grieving today, is that the Lord does hear, and he does care. Sometimes I wish he didn’t so much respect our free will and would swoop in and prevent us feeling the effects of our own and others’ poor choices and wounded hearts and wrong thinking and acting. I wish I could go back to being like three-month-old Juliana whose every need my daughter attends to.

But God wants me to grow up, painful and messy as that process can be. And while this “vale of tears” can be very dark at times, light and hope come to us through the promise of final defeat of wrong and evil. This isn’t “pie in the sky by and by.” Our solid rock, the anchor for our souls, our unwavering confidence is that Jesus is with us now, today, walking through it all right beside us, caring for us in big ways and small.

Please open my eyes; let me see you with me, Lord.

Today.