Your cry has come before the Lord, and He is a God who waits to be gracious. Though you have walked through nearly twenty four years of sore trial, and fifteen years as one whose mind was held in low power, as a weary and wounded frame from brain to legs, from arms to back, without health to labor and without a home to call your own save your sister's roof, yet the Lord has not forgotten you. He who sits at the helm of Providence can pilot the vessel when it is almost upon the rocks, and He hears the sigh that you scarce have words to utter.
We are taught in Scripture that the Lord waits to be gracious, and that His waiting has a purpose. His patience is not in vain toward His chosen. When all else has broken down, we are brought back to salvation through Jesus Christ alone, and there we find Him lovingly waiting, ready to pardon, ready to bless. Your long waiting, your forgetting, your weariness of brain, these are known to Him who formed you and who numbers your days.
Therefore take to heart the word, My soul, wait thou only upon God. Rest calm and undisturbed before Him. They that wait upon the Lord shall not want any good thing. To wait only upon God is to hang your faith upon nothing but His promise, and to find that His right hand alone upholds you when every other support gives way. You have sought help through lawful means, through a good lawyer and through the rule that restores what was lost, and it is right to use such means. Yet let your ultimate confidence be not in papers or dates or offices, but in the living God. He is the God of our salvation, and whether on the hills or in the valleys, whether upon firm land or upon the unstable sea where the boat ever rocks, He remains our confidence.
The Psalmist says, Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart, wait, I say, on the Lord. Waiting upon God sustains courage and renews strength, so that you shall mount up with eagles wings though now you feel you cannot stand. There is a mysterious strength that comes by the incoming of His Spirit into the soul of the faint. Go to your God, poor soul, when you are out of order, and He will strengthen your heart. He sees you in all the good and ill that checker life, He heard you when you declared your ways before Him, and that sweet word, Thou heardest me, is true for you also. What condescension that the great God should hear such a broken prayer.
Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God, casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you. He knows your homelessness, your poverty, your pain, and the confusion over the date that is now called seven years wrong. Ask Him to give wisdom to those who judge your case, to give clarity and justice, and to provide for your daily bread. Ask Him also to keep you, to give you a quiet mind to meditate upon His statutes, even when the powder of this weary world would spoil that meditation.
Let us pray for you. O Lord our God, Thou God of our salvation, look upon this Thy servant who is afflicted and alone, whose body is injured and whose mind is wearied. Thou hast seen the long years of waiting, the years of darkness when the mind was as a low flame, and the years of seeking help that seemed denied. Thou waitest to be gracious, grant grace now. Strengthen the heart that waits upon Thee, renew its courage, and let Thy mysterious power sustain it. Provide shelter and daily bread, guide the hands that handle this claim, and bring forth justice according to Thy will. Above all, keep this soul resting only upon Christ, for there is no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved, and in Him alone is our hope. Let Thy will be done, and let Thy child know that Thou hast heard. In the name of Jesus Christ our only Redeemer we ask it, Amen.
