Day 14: Picking up the phone

I prayed for a relative today who was hurting. He didn’t sound like he was hurting. Not one bit. But he’d been through something none of us ever would want to go through. He felt a lot of responsibility suddenly, and he was trying to live up to it. But internally, this had to be hurting him. So I called and we talked and we prayed. He thanked me. That’s the end of the story. The beginning was much more tortured than that.

How do we go about praying for people in need? How do we reach out to those people who we know need a hand, a word, something? I felt God first urging me to make that call almost a week ago. But I waited. I’m not sure I can tally up all the reasons for the procrastination, but the following is the short list. These thoughts actually went skittering across my mind during the past week: I don’t want to bother him. He and I never were that close to begin with. What if I catch him in the middle of something important? Maybe he doesn’t want help. What if I offend him with something I say? He might think I’m prying, that I’m a busy-body. I’ve never been through something like what he’s going through now. I’m sure he’s getting lots of calls like this one already.

And so I stalled. That’s a terrible thing to do. Paul says God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4). The word “any” stands out to me. If it’s “any trouble,” then I have no excuse. I’ve been comforted by God. One of the reasons God comforted me was so that I, in turn, will be able to comfort others. So when I see someone who I know is hurting, I’m obligated to act.