...pray for God's Blessings...

“9 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; 

my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.

10 For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing;

my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away.

11 I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors,

an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me.

12 I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel.

13 For I hear the whispering of many — terror all around! — as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.

14 But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’

15 My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors.

16 Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love” Psalm 31:9-16.

Dear friends, there is nowhere – not the darkest and loneliest place on the earth – where the Psalmists have not been before us. Specifically, today on Palm Sunday we share in prayer in the final struggles and horrors faced by Jesus himself as he entered Jerusalem and went on His lonely journey to the cross. Let us not deceive ourselves regarding the depth of Jesus’ misery appearing before our eyes: the writer of Psalm 31 is physically weak through overwhelming sadness in verses 9 and 10, a social outcast and, worse, forgotten altogether in verses 11 and 12; and, as if this wasn’t enough, he’s surrounded by whispering plots aimed at finishing him off completely.

Let us pause and, in our prayer today alongside the prayer of Jesus as he goes to the cross, hold before our loving God all those around the world who are in one or more of these miseries right now. We see them on our television screens. We read about them online. There is too much misery and we, gawkers of other people’s distress, detached and unable to help physically, can at least pray. As we stand with God’s people in church today, or walk with them in a Palm Sunday procession, we can make room, in our minds, for the people who would love to be there but can’t, because they are too poor, or in prison, or in a desolate country where their very lives are at risk from selfish leaders who choose to bomb the daylights out of them! We should remember those who daily go about their business not knowing if a bomb, or a knife, or shell, will be the end of them.

Only when we can gather up in our hearts all those sufferers from around the world — only then can we proceed to the last three verses — and lift up a prayer not just for ourselves and our discomforts but for God’s people, indeed, for the whole human race, and all of creation. Remember Jesus who went to the cross to draw all people to Himself, and to break through decay, despair, and death, especially our attraction to sin! Indeed, Jesus held in His heart to the end the new purposes of the Creator God for everyone in His world! More than ever, this God, the God we know is Jesus, who alone will see us from ourselves!

Our times are in His hands because all our days and hours belong to Him!

Today, pray that God’s face will shine on us, and upon everyone in this world, with deliverance and mercy and rescuing power.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner!