Please Pray! Faith's Unfathomable First-resort

Please pray…often follows our heart-cries because life’s hurts are too hard to bear alone!

Sometimes we plead in confidence, our secret sorrows, sometimes it is a world-wide cry.

The latest plea comes from my poet-friend in Las Vegas .
She pleads 'please pray for my city today!'
after yesterday’s shooting.

Please pray…oh God and so we do

You know when life is cruel and hard

Thou, Only God, holy and true

Your outstretched hands are Calv’ry-scarred

Please pray, oh Lord and so we do

To He who hears each earnest plea

For no one is a stranger to

The One who died for you and me

Please pray, then we with fumbling lips

Trust thee to decipher our groan

Where prayer is like a battleship

That transports whispers to Your throne

Please pray, ah, this no last resort

Save to the one who does not know

The faithful mercy of our Lord

And daily grace whereby we go

Please pray for hearts of meek belief

Our God of love the same today

As when He, beneath thorn-pierced grief

For faith and hope opened The Way

© Janet Martin

Psalm 102 

A prayer of an afflicted person who has grown weak and pours out a lament before the Lord.

¹ Hear my prayer, Lord;
    let my cry for help come to you.
² Do not hide your face from me
    when I am in distress.
Turn your ear to me;
    when I call, answer me quickly.

³ For my days vanish like smoke;
    my bones burn like glowing embers.
⁴ My heart is blighted and withered like grass;
    I forget to eat my food.
⁵ In my distress I groan aloud
    and am reduced to skin and bones.
⁶ I am like a desert owl,
    like an owl among the ruins.
⁷ I lie awake; I have become
    like a bird alone on a roof.
⁸ All day long my enemies taunt me;
    those who rail against me use my name as a curse.
⁹ For I eat ashes as my food
    and mingle my drink with tears
¹⁰ because of your great wrath,
    for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.
¹¹ My days are like the evening shadow;
    I wither away like grass.

¹² But you, Lord, sit enthroned forever;
    your renown endures through all generations.
¹³ You will arise and have compassion on Zion,
    for it is time to show favor to her;
    the appointed time has come.
¹⁴ For her stones are dear to your servants;
    her very dust moves them to pity.
¹⁵ The nations will fear the name of the Lord,
    all the kings of the earth will revere your glory.
¹⁶ For the Lord will rebuild Zion
    and appear in his glory.
¹⁷ He will respond to the prayer of the destitute;
    he will not despise their plea.

¹⁸ Let this be written for a future generation,
    that a people not yet created may praise the Lord:
¹⁹ “The Lord looked down from his sanctuary on high,
    from heaven he viewed the earth,
²⁰ to hear the groans of the prisoners
    and release those condemned to death.”
²¹ So the name of the Lord will be declared in Zion
    and his praise in Jerusalem
²² when the peoples and the kingdoms
    assemble to worship the Lord.

²³ In the course of my life^[b] he broke my strength;
    he cut short my days.
²⁴ So I said:
“Do not take me away, my God, in the midst of my days;
    your years go on through all generations.
²⁵ In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
    and the heavens are the work of your hands.
²⁶ They will perish, but you remain;
    they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
    and they will be discarded.
²⁷ But you remain the same,
    and your years will never end.
²⁸ The children of your servants will live in your presence;
    their descendants will be established before you.”