“Can you please help me?”
As I bend down, my 2 1/2 year-old niece hands me a lollipop in a plastic wrapper.
It’s my 5 year-old niece’s birthday and the girls and their cousins have just beaten a piñata to pieces, liberating all the lollies onto the concrete slab of the carport. The piñata started out as a large number five covered in a rainbow of coloured paper strips, and ended in a mangle of torn cardboard quickly forgotten in the scramble for sugared treasure.
The lollipop comes from my young niece’s treasure hoard.
Tearing from the top, I peel back the plastic skin and place the glistening lollipop back into her waiting hand.
There’s something precious in her question. She believed and trusted that I was willing and able to give the help that she needed.
It is one of my favourite auntie moments, being asked for help.
And I can’t help but wonder if that’s a little how God feels when I come to him, asking for help and trusting him to answer.
But so often I try to do things on my own. So often I tell myself that I should be able to do something without having to ask for help.
Even when I really need it.
So often I’m that other version of a two year-old: “I can do it myself.”
Despite all evidence to the contrary.
So often I’m afraid that I really am on my own.
“Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”
Isaiah 41:10, NASB
As I was my niece’s helper, so God is my helper.
I don’t need to beg or whine or demand his help. God is my helper, and he is delighted when I trust him to take care of me.
Flourish! 