This morning’s word is Help Me.
The anchor verses are 2 Corinthians 12:9 and Mark 5:28.
A woman in Minnesota named Kathryn Woessner was missing for three days. She had been driving in a remote wooded area near a small town called Backus when her minivan got stuck in mud on a rarely used trail. Trying to free it, she slipped and fell into a puddle described later as quicksand-like, only about two feet deep, but deep enough. She landed on her back. For three days she lay there in the open weather, dehydrated, severely sunburned, only the round part of her face above the surface.
Two friends from West Fargo, Adam Sandbeck and Mike Gravalin, were out on their ATVs on a Saturday afternoon. They almost always ride the same trails. On this day, for reasons neither of them planned, they tried a new one. The minivan came into view first. Next to it, in a puddle of mud, was what looked like a body. The two men thought she was already gone.
Then she whispered the only two words she had left.
Help me.
That is the thread this morning. Your part is the reach. HIS part is everything that comes after. The reach can be the size of a whisper.
The disciples on the hillside in Galilee, in Matthew 28, heard the largest commission ever given to a small group of unschooled men. Go and make disciples of all nations. They had no credentials. Some had run when HE was arrested. Some had denied HIM. None felt ready. And then the line that holds the whole sending together. “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Peyton Jones and Kris Langham, in their disciple-making plan Discipology, name the move Paul made in Second Corinthians chapter twelve. Paul asked GOD to take away his weakness. GOD answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul’s reply: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” The weakness was the doorway. The smallest reach made room for the largest power.
Adam Sandbeck, one of the two men who pulled her out, told reporters something he could not have planned. “I truly feel the hand of God is the reason why we were able to save a life this weekend.” Two friends on the wrong trail at the right moment. A whisper that should have been too small to carry. It carried.
The Day Eight reading in the healing plan from ResLife Church holds up two scenes that say the same thing from different sides. An entire Israelite army stood within hearing of the same covenant promise David stood on. Only David picked up the stones. A whole crowd pressed against Jesus on the road in Mark chapter five, all of them touching HIM, all of them within reach. Only one woman with the issue of blood reached with a verb. “If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” Jesus felt the power leave HIM. HE asked who touched HIM. The disciples said everyone was. Jesus knew the difference. The crowd was near. Only one reached.
Woessner’s mud was not the gift. The reversal was the gift. The wrong trail that became the right one. The two strangers who became the hand. The whisper that became the prayer GOD heard.
The smallest reach has to have somewhere to land, and something to hold. Ignatius of Antioch, the second-century bishop and martyr who wrote seven letters to early churches on his way to Rome and execution, writes in chapter five of his letter to the Trallians that he is in chains, that he knows the heavenly things, and still says “many things are yet wanting to me, that I may not fall short of God.” Even a martyr in chains stays in the reach. He does not become the source. And the ten-day plan from ResLife Church on overcoming temptation puts the same posture from a different angle. Jesus in the wilderness met every lie with “It is written.” HIS hand was on the Word. Without the Word in hand, every landmark starts to lie.
Kathryn Woessner had two words left in her. Two were enough because the hand was already moving toward her on a trail two friends had never ridden before. You are not the source. You are the reach. And the hand has already started.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.