A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Rice Handford
The little boy was only two years old when his father was killed in a freak automobile accident. So many people—so many!—crowded into his home, and Mother kept crying, and Daddy didn’t come home to take charge like he always did. He and his young Mother wept together for a long time.
The employees of his father’s firm arranged a very special tribute to the memory of their colleague. The zoo had been a favorite haunt of the child and his father, so the firm built a new pavilion for the lions (as I remember) at our local zoo. We friends of the family stood as the brass plaque was unveiled, and lots of people made tearful speeches. But the widow suddenly left the platform and pushed her way through the standing crowd. Her mother-heart had heard her little son’s wail, in spite of all the noise. She knelt down by the sobbing child, and stayed there on her knees, with her arms around him, holding him close and whispering into his ear. She knelt there until the child was quieted and content to go back to his aunt.
I looked at that kneeling, listening mother and thought of Psalm 116:1 and 2:
I love the Lord
because He hears my voice
and my prayer for mercy.
Because He bends down and listens,
I will pray as long as I have breath!
The great God who flung a billion galaxies of stars into space, the Almighty Creator who has the care of eight billion living people on His heart all the time, that Holy One bends down from Heaven so He can hear me—one of millions, insignificant me!—tell Him what’s on my heart.
The Scriptures don’t tell us who wrote Psalm 116, but we do know that King David, in Psalm 86 prayed, “Bend down, O Lord, and hear my prayer. Answer me, for I need your help.” Is it presumptuous for a human being, fraught with sin and uncertainty and self-centeredness, to ask for God’s personal, focused attention? Absolutely not! On the contrary, when we take God at His Word, and ask for what He has promised, it delights Him. He created us so we could be His friend. Else, why did Jesus say so plainly, in Luke 11:9,10 (njkv),
So I [Jesus] say to you,
Ask, and it will be given to you;
Seek, and you will find;
Knock, and it will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives,
and he who seeks finds,
and to him who knocks it will be opened.
It sounds too good to be true, but it is true. All God wants from us is to love Him and obey Him. May God help us to turn from the distractions, the temptations, the sins of our busy lives. May He help us to tell Him our burdens, when He bends down to hear us pray.