A Very Present Help

There is a television bracketed to the wall with the sound off and the subtitles wrong, and a man three seats down is having a long phone call about a van.

That is the room. Strip lights. A vending machine that hums and then stops and then hums. Somebody's toddler who has decided the floor is interesting. Two staff talking about a rota by the doors. The noise is not enormous, it is just constant, and it has no gaps in it.

He is sitting with his father, who is quiet, and has been for about an hour.

And here is the thing that has been bothering him for most of the evening, in among everything else: he cannot pray in here.

Not that he does not want to. He has tried. But every time he starts, the phone call about the van comes back in, or the machine hums, and it feels like trying to have a conversation across a busy road, and after four goes at it he has concluded that whatever this room is, it is not a place where God is available, and the thought has left him lonelier than the waiting did.

That is your room. That is your evening. And I want to reach you in the noise, because the verse everybody quotes about God being near was written about exactly this kind of room and not about a quiet one.

Present in the trouble, not beyond it

Psalm 46 opens with a line so familiar that its most important word usually slides past.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.Psalm 46:1

In trouble. Not after it. Not beyond it, in some quieter room you have to reach first. In it, which in your case means in a department with a television on mute and a man talking about a van.

And very present is the translators reaching for something the Hebrew is emphatic about: abundantly found, readily available, near to hand. It is the language you would use about something within arm's reach rather than something you have to go and get.

You have Him within reach in that room. Not in a chapel down the corridor. Not at home later when it is quiet. There, between the strip light and the vending machine, with your father beside you. The written word puts the help inside the trouble, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a man on a hard chair rather than leaving it as a verse for the front of a card.

Now let me take something off you, because you have been carrying it since about the third attempt.

You have decided that failing to pray properly means failing to reach God. Those are two entirely different things, and only one of them has happened.

You have been unable to concentrate. That is all. It is what a loud room does to a tired man with a frightened heart, and it is not a spiritual failure, and it is certainly not a closed door.

You are not required to concentrate your way to Him. The written word says He is very present, which makes the nearness His doing rather than the result of your focus. The Holy Spirit has been beside you through all four attempts and through the gaps between them.

And here is what I want you to have, because it fits in that room.

You do not need sentences. God is a prayer. Please is a prayer. Sitting there with your hand near your father's arm and no words at all is a prayer, and it is one the Holy Spirit is well able to carry, because the carrying was never dependent on your fluency.

You have already been praying this evening. A very present help, and the help is present to a man who cannot find a coherent sentence. The Holy Spirit does not require the room to go quiet before He will count what is going on in you.