Recently when I went to visit with some of our long-term residents
of a care facility, I saw a woman in a wheelchair out in the hall,
who kept calling out: “Help me, God! Help me,
God!”
As I passed near her, she asked: “Can you
help me?”
So I stopped and asked her, “What do you want me to do?” She
replied, “I don’t know.”
“It’s difficult for me to do something for you if you don’t
know what you want me to do”, I said in return. And as I
continued on my visitation rounds the woman once more began
calling:
“Help me, God.”
After I finished with my calls I passed the woman again, and she was
still calling out, “Help me, God ” and “Can you help me?” No one
was coming to her assistance; no one was paying any attention to
her.
So for the second time I asked what she wanted, and she
replied once more, “I don’t know.”
I told her that I thought she might need someone to give her a
little attention, and she said Yes. And so I sat down next to her and
I took her hand, and we talked. I asked her name, and was she
sitting near the doorway to her room. We had a kind of conversation she
could handle. I couldn’t help her to go home, I
said, but I could give her the gift of prayer if she would like
that.
She said yes.
So I prayed for her by name. We talked some more, hand in
hand.
When I left she kissed my hand and put it beside her
cheek.
As I continued to walk down the hall, she was no longer
calling out for help, at least for another while . .
.
Today’s scripture reading is somewhat similar. A man is
calling out, begging for money. Peter had nothing the man
expected to get, but Peter gave the man what he did have, and that
was the healing power of Jesus.
Put your faith to work for the good of all. It is
the pastor’s job to help people find their particular niches, and to
equip others to deliver Jesus’ message of caring and hope and
healing - - to prepare and challenge everyone to give of themselves
what they have. Only then will the church feel the
power of a still-speaking God.
We are not perfect. We, too, are people of need. We
cannot save ourselves. We need to be vulnerable enough to
ask God for help, like the woman in the care facility, and the
beggar in today’s scripture reading. We need to ask and to receive - -
that’s why we gather here, now, in worship. We need
to be willing to accept what God gives us. Neither
the woman I encountered nor the man Peter encountered received
exactly what they wanted, but God answered their calls and met their
needs.
As we celebrate the sacrament of Communion this morning at
God’s table, may we find that God supplies generously for
us. (Back to
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