Verse of the Day for October 17

Paul asks a question that sounds almost like a riddle: what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? Once the door is open and you can see through it, you stop hoping. You simply walk.

Which means hope only lives on this side of a door you cannot see past. If you could see the outcome, you would not need patience. Then do we with patience wait for it.

Then comes the sentence that makes this bearable. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. Paul admits something most of us are embarrassed to say out loud: we know not what we should pray for as we ought. Even our praying, while we wait, comes out wrong.

And the answer is not a better prayer method. It is the Spirit praying alongside us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Some nights there are no words, only a sigh into the pillow at three in the morning. Paul says the Spirit is in that sigh too.

Perhaps you are standing at a door that may open and may not, a job, a marriage, a move abroad. You do not have to know how to pray about it correctly. You only have to keep waiting near the door and let the Spirit carry what you cannot say.

When you do not know what to ask for, you have not stopped praying.

A groan offered to God is not a failure of faith.