Every Little Prayer Helps

On my list of names I use to visit the hospital patients is a name, sex, and age. Typically when someone is very old, I expect to find them asleep or non-responsive. The lady I was about to see was 95. I figured I would slip in, leave her a 'daily thought' card, and exit quietly. I know this sounds like a joke, but she didn't look a day over 70, even in a hospital bed! She had bright eyes and a big smile. And she also had something else - a blessing for me. For forty-one years she has lived alone, after the passing of her husband. She hates being in the hospital because it means she will miss church - and she loves her church and her pastor. She has a neighbor lady who is 25 years younger, but just seems to have given up on life. She says, "I tell her not to give up. There are so many blessings to count, and so many ways that God is with us. I tell her that if she feels low, just to offer a small prayer and God will hear her. Every little prayer helps, that's what I believe." While she was beautifully chattering away I was saying a little prayer of thanks. The one who came to bless has been blessed. I told her so. And now as I've entered the exhausting few days before Bible camp begins and I have a thousand things to do, I remember that visit. And I think it is a grand theology ... a statement of awesome faith ... to say that "every little prayer helps". It says that the power is not in us, and our faith is not in us, and our strength is not in us. Like a woman who crawled through the streets just to touch the hem of His garment, so we in our weakness can offer a small prayer ... a little prayer ... and know that it helps. He is our help and strength.