Please Help

Please Help

Her hand-lettered sign said “Please help.” No added information about needing work or being hungry or homeless or disabled. Just two simple, direct words. She did not walk along the line of cars waiting at the intersection. She just shifted her weight from one leg to the other a time or two. The light changed before I could clearly see her face and whatever story it told, but I could read her sign and read it clearly. “Please help.”

For blocks past the intersection where she stood, I wondered, How? What particular sort of help did this woman most need? Five dollars? Ten? Twenty? Although I’m sure currency of any denomination would not have been refused, what real difference would it have made? And how much currency would it take for her to abandon the sign and the street corner where it was displayed?

She held her sign, I’m presuming, because she wanted something specific. Something that might trigger change in her life. But what she triggered in me was a question—“How?”—and this conviction: I don’t say “Please help” near enough. I am proud and more prone to give help unasked than to confess that I need it myself. When I could no longer see the woman at the corner, I pictured myself holding her sign and letting it be read by strangers.

And I pictured myself saying those two confessional words to my heavenly Father, over and over: Please help.

Please help me to love you more. Please help me to love my family and friends in ways that mean love to them. Please help me to love my neighbors well. Please help me to see the world the way you see it, Father, and respond to what I see as Jesus would. Please help me to listen to the still, small voice of the Spirit that beckons me and teaches me the way of love. Please help me to slay pride and selfishness and apathy and cynicism. They are ugly and do not honor you. Please help me to say “Please help” as often as I feel my need for your help. And please help me to bear a strong family resemblance to you and to your beautiful Son. Please help.

I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?

Psalm 121:1, ESV