Asking for help

It's a spiritual leap forward when you have to go to complete strangers and ask for help. It's another spiritual leap forward when help arrives without you even having to ask for it.

Until my Dad died in 1983 I used to think of myself as normally "muddling through". I lived on my own but felt quite self-sufficient. When Dad passed away I had to travel 250 miles to where Mum was and sort out matters that were completely outside my experience. I had no choice but to turn to strangers whom my parents' friends had recommended and plead, "We are bereaved and I need your expertise quickly. Can you help?" It was a great feeling when willing and timely help arrived.

This is a powerful symbol of God's free grace. Even the most capable of us is helpless to reach heaven, but Jesus helped me when a stranger.

It is even more humbling when the help comes without you even asking for it. As I enter my last month as minister at my current church, a difficult house move looms as well as unemployment. Yet many friendly offers have come in unbidden to make that move look manageable now. I see God's hand in it and am hugely thankful.

I am not normally a Prayer Book man, but the prayer for wisdom comes to mind: "Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking …" I feel embarrassed but enormously thankful when God gives me answers to prayers which I have never even prayed.

My last Sunday at the church is a week away. I face the ordeal with a growing sense that God's grace is preparing me for something worthwhile beyond that.