“Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them out of their distresses.” Psalm 107: 6,13,19,18
“Shh! Did you hear something?” The rescuers leaned forward and heard the quiet cry. They began to remove the rubble a little at a time. Finally, the small boy was pulled out and carried away on a stretcher. Shouts of joy erupted! With all the devastation which followed the Turkey earthquake, it was good to have a reason to rejoice.
While the boy was under the rubble, he could not move. There was only one thing he could do. He cried out. And that helpless cry was the very thing that led to his rescue.
Hopefully, none of us will ever experience a severe earthquake. But life does include problems, both big and small. Sometimes we feel stuck and cannot get out from under our problems. What do we do? There’s only one thing we can do. We cry out!
In Psalm 107, the psalmist describes events of hunger, thirst, darkness, affliction, deadly storms. All hopeless situations. What did the people do? “They cried out to the Lord in their trouble.” And what did the Lord do? “He delivered them out of their distresses.” The same verse is written word for word in 4 places in the psalm. The 4 situations varied, but the solution was the same. They cried out to the Lord, and He rescued them.
For most of us, crying out to the Lord is not our first response. Instead, we struggle to handle problems on our own. We struggle and struggle and struggle some more. Finally, we are at our wits’ end. Then, we cry out to the Lord. God always hears our cry. He always delivers us. He never fails us. He never forsakes us. It is never too late to cry out to the Lord. But wouldn’t life be easier if we just cried out to Him in the beginning?
