Trial

Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil.

—Lord’s Prayer

      Some 30 years ago, I was on one of my periodic silent retreats at the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. One evening I was in my room, lying on the bed, when I heard a voice. I didn’t hear it aurally and it was not my own voice sounding in my mind. This voice, speaking to my spirit, said clearly, “When it gets difficult, I will be with you.”

     Fast forward a few years.  My father who had been hospitalized after a brain hemorrhage went into cardiac arrest and died. I was not with him. I had been there at the hospital in San Antonio where he was receiving care, but after two weeks had to return home and was planning to return within days. My mother was not with him either. The Physicians had convinced her to return home and get some rest. By all appearances my father was alone.

     Unbeknownst to me or my mother, my home congregation’s lay youth advisor from Atlanta happened to be in San Antonio on business. Waking on Sunday morning in his hotel he had the strong sense that he should go and check in on my father. Upon arriving at the hospital he heard an emergency code called. Again he had this strong sense. So, he talked his way back into the ICU to sit at my father’s bedside where he read aloud the psalms and prayed as my father died.

     “When it gets difficult, I will be with you.”

     If there is a singular theme that runs throughout scripture, it is, I believe, Emmanuel, God with us. Unlike the gods of the ancient Near East who were at a distance from their subjects, the God of Sarah, Jacob and Jesus chose to come down and experience our humanity. This God was willing to go through pain and suffering to be in solidarity with us. This God chose to go through death, as opposed to around it, in order to know fully what it means to be human. And this God promises…“When it gets difficult, I will be with you.”

     Praying to be saved from the time of trial, and delivered from evil is not about keeping us from being tempted by the little sins of life.  Nor is it about saving us from all the suffering, pain and death we all will inevitably experience. No, “save us from the time of trial” is a plea to help us keep hold of faith, hope and love when life gets difficult. It’s about placing our faith in the God who is in solidarity with us, protecting us from nothing even as God, Emmanuel sustains us in all things.

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Photo by Eric Murray