Code Blue to 3300! Code Blue to 3300!
The words echoed in my ears as I was quickly ushered from my father-in-law’s hospital room. He had just collapsed on me, with what we would later find out was a heart attack brought on by sepsis.
As I exited the room, my wife came around the corner. Understanding dawned on her face, and I caught her as she went to the floor. Her plea broke my heart, “Oh, please God, not him too!” Only seven months earlier, her mother had died unexpectedly. This had left a huge hole in our family and our hearts.
“Lord, what do I say? How do I ask you not to take him? What do I say to her?” I thought to myself.
At times like this, our hearts are so heavy, we really don’t know what to say. But as Christians, we know God is there for us.
Romans 8:26 tells us, “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” The Spirit helps us in our weakness. When we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
We have all been at a point where our heart is so heavy and burdened that we don’t know what to pray. Our loving, Heavenly Father understands, and He makes a way for us.
With grateful heart, I am happy to say God listened to the groanings of the Spirit that night. It has been six years ago that God was merciful and my father-in-law was revived. At 81 years young (He was just in the hayfield last week!), we all look at every day with him as a special gift from God.
Remember, when we are at our lowest, God is there. He knows everything, even when we don’t have the words to ask! GOD IS SO GOOD!
John Swonger – CBC Executive Board member
