As she was taking my blood pressure, I felt the sudden inclination to ask; “Is there anything I can be praying for you?” She gave a long pause and said, “Did someone tell you to ask me that?” I told her I was a minister and God seemed to lay it on my heart to ask the question. She then burst into tears and confessed that her 24-year-old son had been murdered in Dallas six weeks earlier while on a business trip. It was random – wrong place at the wrong time. He graduated from Bluffton High School in 2012, attended college and became an engineer. She said, “He was a gentle soul and the apple of my eye.” I got up, walked over and held her as she wept bitterly. In times like these there’s nothing to say, the deeper the pain the fewer words you use.

In Psalm 56, the psalmist speaks of people who have pain so deep are never forgotten by God. The psalm says that every tear David had cried, God had placed in a bottle. It’s this intimate imagery that God is near in our hurt. The God of the universe, hearing millions of prayers at any given time, is aware of every tear that leaves our eyes.

You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8

There are people all around us that have pain so deep that very few understand. You never know how God might use you by simply asking: “Is there anything I can pray for?”