Your soul is in a very whirlwind of care, and you toss on the billows of a thousand anxieties, the son, the interview, the husband, and no rest for the sole of your foot. Yet what is all this but the voice of your God calling you out of the wilderness to cast your every burden upon Him who alone can bear them? The Lord's mercy does not stand afar off, waiting until you have calmed yourself; it comes to you in the very desert of your trouble, at the well where you sit down spent and sorrowful.
Consider that singular season when the angel of the Lord found Hagar by the fountain in the way to Shur. It was the hour of her utter extremity, fleeing from her mistress with no hope before her, and there mercy met her with a home question: "Whence camest thou? and whither wilt thou go?" Even so, this night of your wrestling may be the ordained moment for God's overtaking mercy. The sleeplessness of your son, the trembling over Monday's business, the shadow of that court case which threatens to tear your heart asunder, these are not marks of His absence, but the very footsteps of mercy walking toward you, if you have eyes to see.
Yet let me speak plainly to your soul, for there is a mercy that spares the sinner only to give him a new heart, and there is a false hope that whispers peace where no peace is. Has the Lord's mercy already come to you in the vital matter of your own sin and your standing before His bar? For if you are not yourself a partaker of saving mercy through the blood of the covenant, every other blessing will prove but a thin veneer over eternal ruin. Your husband's case before an earthly judge is a faint shadow of the case which every soul must answer at the last assize. What if the video is not shown before men, yet the books are opened before the great white throne? What if the judge of this world is lenient, yet the Judge of all the earth does right and will by no means clear the guilty, unless the guilt has been borne by the Substitute? I do not ask these things to add to your burden, but because the only true comfort in temporal troubles flows from a soul that has first made its peace with God through Jesus Christ.
But now, to your present desires. Lay hold of this: the God of your mercy has gone before you. Before Monday's sun rises, He is already in the interview room, already in that classroom, already in the court. The workings of His providence were shaped in eternity to meet this very week; the sermon you have not yet heard, the phone call that has not yet come, the heart of the official who has not yet considered your case, all are in the hand of Him who preveniently prepares mercy for His people. While you are yet calling, He will answer. The prayer itself is part of the deliverance; in praying, you are already being unburdened, already being guided, already being quieted. Persist in it, and do not think Him reluctant. He is slow to anger, plenteous in mercy. Justice unsheathes the sword, but mercy presses it back into the scabbard, crying, "Sleep, O sword, sleep; for I will have mercy upon sinners."
Only see that you seek not mercy on your own terms, but on His. You ask that someone be nice, that someone consider your feelings. But what if the kindest thing He does is to allow that which humbles your whole family, that which drives you out of every false confidence, that which makes the earth barren so that you strike the desert spring? The Messenger of mercy sought and found the lost when they were in the leper colony of society, when the gates of human hope were shut. He does not always deliver from the lion’s mouth in the way we prescribe; sometimes He delivers the soul through the trial, making the very bed of thorns a place of revealing His tenderness.
Take this word home: “Your Maker is your husband.” In that covenant relationship there is a tenderness that suits itself to every individual case. The mercy that pardons is the same mercy that provides for Monday’s needs and the sleepless child and the trembling heart. Plead the blood of the sacrifice, for there alone mercy finds her blessed loophole to come to the undeserving. And as you wait for the answer, look not for a token that the video is hidden, but for the token that Christ is formed in you, and that you are brought, with all your house, to kiss the scepter of His sovereign grace. That will make the court’s decree neither here nor there, for you will have hold of a kingdom that cannot be moved.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
