Has this happened to you? I sat at my desk yesterday as 6 p.m. approached holding my head in my hands. It had been a day that started at 5 a.m. with a 4 mile walk, then jam-packed with back to back meetings. And the day was not over as I looked at my calendar and saw a 6:30 p.m. meeting at church.
I looked over the action items from the meetings and the due dates and thought how in the world am I going to get all this done by Friday? I did a quick clean up to my desktop and put things in project piles. I figured the best approach was to just step away from it and come back to it fresh early in the morning and tackle it all.
God talks to me at 3 a.m. in the morning. That’s sort of our appointed time. I get a nudge that says “Get up..I need to tell you how this is going to work.” The song “My Help” by the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir kept running through my mind. The familiar refrain “my help, all of my help cometh from the Lord” repeated over and over again until I finally eased out of bed and headed upstairs for our quiet time together.
I thought okay Lord, this is my reminder, once again, that I don’t run things…You do. My assignment, my charge, if you will, is to bring it all to You and ask You to direct my path. I should know from experience that my attempts at anything are futile without His touch.
But you know, we’re human, and we forget that God is in the little stuff as well as the big stuff. He wants to help us in our daily work lives. Sometimes I think we feel like we should only bother God for the “big” stuff. How dare I bother him about my piddly insignificant work assignments when there’s a sister who lost her husband today or a father who lost his job today or some country that is living in daily warfare?
I tell myself to suck it up. My problems aren’t worthy of God’s precious time. He has “real” issues to deal with. But then….
At our appointed 3 a.m. time, He reminds me that He is here for me too. He is concerned about what I’m concerned with. I feel humbled that He cares and I feel ashamed that I’ve not always been that kind of friend to others. So busy in my own comings and goings that I don’t take the time to check in on another. I’m so glad that He’s not like me.
The song lyrics running through my spirit are from Psalm 121:
1 I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.
2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
8 The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
These words are my plan and my assurance for the day. I don’t have to be overwhelmed. I may choose to be overwhelmed and anxious, but if I do, that’s on me–not Him. Because He has told me through Psalm 121 that all I have to do is lift my eyes to Him and know that help is there. Instead of holding my head in my hands, I should lift my head and my hands to the sky. There is my help.
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