In the Deep Crater

While I have always understood the value of a disciplined spiritual life and while I have for the most part fleshed out through practice such an understanding, I also know there have been times when practicing a disciplined spiritual life was something I could not do.   As I reflect over the years of walking the way I set out to walk when I gave my life to Christ, I remember two major moments in my life which so shook my life that I could not find my way to my knees and neither did I find myself with enough energy to read the Word.  There are times when life seems to blow up and we find ourselves in the bottom of a deep crater from which we cannot climb.   

In those moments when we cannot pray, when our spirit cannot speak the Godly words, and when we are too beaten down to look up, we need to keep before us the reality that others are praying for us.  A blessings in such times is knowing that when we cannot pray, others are praying for us.  Being in that kind of darkness does not speak of a loss of faith so much as it speaks of a need to be held up and sustained by the prayers of others.  A friend of mine who went through one of those after death experiences speaks of a moment in that world between here and there when he caught a glimpse of gathered saints praying for him.  It was life giving.

All of us have been a part of that crowd of praying saints as our family members and friends became the sufferers.  We held them up when they could not stand.  We prayed for them when they could not pray.  That such a moment might come to us may be a surprise, but it should not, for we all come to moments when the struggle is too great to stand alone.  When they come, and they will, let us receive with gratitude the grace that is offered to us when we are bent, broken, bleeding, and trying to stay on the road that takes us Home.  When we cannot hold ourselves up, others are doing the work of holding us up through their prayers.