Holding Up Weak and Weary Arms

“I don’t normally do this, but to all my praying friends please, please, please pray for my dad.  He has had tremendously rough 24 plus hours with his health condition and needs our prayers.  Thank you a million times!”

My younger daughter posted that yesterday on her Facebook page.  Beneath ran a scroll of 50 (50!) replies promising prayers (plus 77 “likes”).  Staggered.  Overwhelmed.  Grateful.  I showed Lois and remarked with tears streaming down my cheeks, “Look how many there are!”

Regular readers have heard ad nauseum  about my primary lateral sclerosis—a neurological disease that weakens legs, then progresses upwards, carrying with it other loathsome symptoms,  It’s not fatal, but feels as if it is.  My last 24 hours i’ve developed unrelenting headaches and dizziness.  I hit bottom.  That’s why my daughter’s posting and all those pray-ers unleashed grateful tears.

I thought of Moses . . .

The Amelakites came and attacked the Israelites as Rephidim.  Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amelakites.  Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands,”  So Joshua fought the Amerlakites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill.  As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were wining.  When Moses’ hands grew tired, they ook a stone put it under him and he sait on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—-so that his hands remained steady till sunset.  So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword (Exodus 17:8-13).

I couldn’t pray yesterday.  Beaten down, I had no strength (or faith?) to ask God for anything.  I was, in fact, depressingly angry with God.  But I couldn’t lash out at him.  Could plead with him.  I needed someone to come and “hold up my weak and weary arms.”  And came they did

Thankfulness for my daughter overflows my heart—and thankfulness for her friends and their prayers.  I’m marginally better today, but healed in my heart by their awesome love.

A lesson:  when someone asks for prayer, I’ve got to pray a prayer from my heart—then write a quick reply so the one in need knows I’m “holding up” his/her arms.  Then I become a channel of God’s grace for someone I might not even know.

I’ve been prayed for often, especially in the last several years.  But no prayers touched my heart like those yesterday.  How our Father will respond to them, I can’t be sure.  But I know this:  he answered in a way probably no one intended when a lovely daughter and many unknown believers held up my weak and weary arms.