Psalm 22:11
Be not far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is none to help.
The desperation and loneliness of these words is the desperation and loneliness of billions of voices across the ages. Yet incredibly, we find, not so much that God sits up in heaven listening to these words (though he does listen) as that he is beside us, praying these words too. For these are the words he himself prayed as he hung on the cross. The God we feared might be slow to come to us in our pain is the God who got there 2,000 years before us and has already plumbed the bottom of the worst of the worst. He is here to help and he is closer to you than your own skin.
