HELP!

I have been noticing messages of encouragement written on the sidewalks when I am out walking. 

Last week I sent Samuel (8) out with a box of chalk with the following instructions: write messages for people out walking and draw some pretty pictures.  A little later I went out to check out his handiwork:  Sam had drawn some flowers and in big letters had written "HELP!" on the sidewalk.  


Not exactly inspiring, but I hadn't given very clear instructions..

I think most of us can relate to Sam.  Yesterday, on the radio I heard that all outdoor events were cancelled until the end of June in the city of Toronto-- "HELP"--how long can we keep this up?  

How do we prepare spiritually for what looks like a very long quarantine?

Eugene Petersen's in his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction writes:

“Mercy, GOD, mercy!”: the prayer is not an attempt to get God to do what he is unwilling otherwise to do, but a reaching out to what we know that he does do, an expressed longing to receive what God is doing in and for us in Jesus Christ.” 

Perhaps, Sam did write an inspiring message;  the prayer that we all need is simple and one word: HELP! 

Anne Lamott make this claim quite explicitly asserting that "Help" is one of the three basic forms of prayer.  She writes:

“Most good, honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge, that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to being helped by something, some force, some friends, some something.”

Our relationship with God begin with acknowledged vulnerability.  

Today, I woke up beyond discouraged.  Jodie, why are you even writing this blog?   Who knows how long this quarantine is going to last?  How long will you keep this up?  I can't answer that question for sure, but I know that it is helping me spiritually to blog.  

Sometimes all we can do is cry out to God for mercy and then get up and dress to our shoes (I am a strong believer in the quickening power of having your feet shod) and do our best.  Today doing my best looks like writing one more blog post, but I need help today.  So,  I will end with a long quote from Eugene Petersen.

Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying. Hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith. It is a willingness to let God do it his way and in his time. It is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it. That is not hoping in God but bullying God. I pray to GOD-my life a prayer-and wait for what he'll say and do. My life's on the line before God, my Lord, waiting and watching till morning, waiting and watching till morning