Midweek Musing- May 28, 2025

Prayer – An opportunity for grace to find us

“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”    Hebrews 4:16

Now as a Paster (technically, Commissioned Ruling Elder) I probably shouldn’t so readily share this, but I sometimes really struggle with prayer. Understand this, it is not because I don’t believe in it, but because I often don’t understand what I am really seeking and more importantly needing.

See, like many people, I tend to pray for answers. I want clarity, solutions, a clean resolution (within an hour including commercials.)

Especially when life feels overwhelming or when someone I love is hurting, I find myself praying or even, you might say, pleading with God for direction, for answers, for healing, for something I can grasp and do.

I then when I didn’t get them or they weren’t the answers I wanted I wondered what the purpose in prayer actually was.

Furthermore, over time, I’ve come to realize that even when I do get an answer, it rarely brings the kind of peace I’m really longing for, especially when my heart is breaking.

Now it has taken a long time and lots of conversations and study and time but what I try to now remember is what I need—what all of us need more than answers—is as Paul shares in Hebrews us “mercy and grace.”

Hebrews 4:16 doesn’t say, *“Come to God and God will fully explain everything.”

No, it says, “Come… so that you may receive mercy and find grace to help in your time of need.”

Not answers. Not instant fixes. But something deeper, richer, and more enduring: mercy that meets us in our brokenness, and grace that holds us together when we feel like falling apart.

Thus, I have realized that there have been times when I’ve gone to God expecting a roadmap and instead received quiet strength. Or I’ve gone looking for a way out and found instead a hand to hold. Grace doesn’t change our circumstances—but it changes us. It finds us. It steadies and supports us. It reminds us that we are not alone.

And those are the type of things which give us peace. Because peace is not the absence of uncertainty, but the presence of the One who is faithful.

So let us come to God—not timidly, not pretending we have it all together, but boldly, honestly, just as we are. Let us come not to be fixed, but to be loved. Not to be informed, but to be embraced. And there, in the loving arms of our Creator, we will find exactly what we truly need mercy for our mistakes, grace for our grief, and strength for today.

Friends, may we always remember that grace and mercy may not always give us answers, but it will always give us peace. And in our times of hurt, grief and need, that’s what we really need.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Alleluia Amen.