One morning, when I was a young child, I was sitting in the kitchen, watching
my mother prepare breakfast. Unexpectedly, the grease in the skillet in which
she was frying bacon caught fire. Flames shot into the air and my mother ran to
the pantry for a bag of flour to throw on the blaze.
“Help!” I shouted. And then I added, “Oh, I wish it was time to pray!”
“It’s time to pray” must have been a frequent household expression, and I took
it quite literally to mean we could pray only at certain times.
The time to pray, of course, is any time—especially when we’re in
crisis. Fear, worry, anxiety, and care are the most common occasions for
prayer. It is when we are desolate, forsaken, and stripped of every human
resource that we naturally resort to prayer. We cry out with the words of
David, “Help me, O Lord!” ( Ps. 70:01).
John Cassian, a 5th-century Christian, wrote of this verse: “This is the
terrified cry of someone who sees the snares of the enemy, the cry of someone
besieged day and night and exclaiming that he cannot escape unless his
Protector comes to the rescue.”
May this be our simple prayer in every crisis and all day long: “Help,
Lord!”
There is no place or time we cannot pray. (RBC)
