Help Within Reach
Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom, 16 April 2026.
Lord, I will lift my eyes to the hills
Knowing my help is coming from You
Your peace, You give me in time of the storm
You are the source of my strength
You are the strength of my life
I lift my hands in total praise to You
You are the source of my strength
You are the strength of my life
I lift my hands in total praise to You
Friends, we've just heard one version of Richard Smallwood's classic composition.
"I looked to the hills from once, cometh my help." --Psalm 121
and today's message is a message about actually resisting help and asking for help.
So the story is that a few years ago in a restored prairie in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I got dangerously lost. I was at a conference that had just ended, and for reasons I can't remember, I had driven separately from colleagues who had departed earlier in a different car, and I had some hours to spare before returning home and made a last minute decision to visit the university's arboretum. It was a very hot day in June, and because it was so hot, my intention was to spend only a few minutes communing with nature.
There was a sign to a labyrinth, close to the nature center, so I decided to walk to the labyrinth, and in the heat I walked quickly. I enjoyed the labyrinth, and then I made a crucial decision to take a different path back to the nature center. It had been a very short walk, maybe a minute, two minutes at most, and I knew that another path would take me around a different clump of trees, and I would be back at the Nature Center in a matter of moments.
I was not back at the Nature Center in a matter of moments. When I realized that I was not on track, I started to look for signs to point me back the right way, and there were no signs. So I wandered one foot in front of me, confident that the path I was on would take me where I needed to go, and then it didn't. Lost in a restored prairie in the arboretum that day, I had a number of problems all at once. I wasn't wearing any sunscreen, and it was high noon on a hot June day under a cloudless sky. I wasn't wearing a hat or sunglasses as I walked in the high grass. The sun was giving me a mean headache and I had nothing to ward off those relentless rays. I had no water.
There was water in my car on the other side of the nature center, wherever that was. And meanwhile, I was meandering along, unfamiliar paths, very probably walking around in a circle by now. I, I was parched. At one point I saw a group of people in the distance. I thought about calling out, Hey, I'm lost, but that felt ridiculous.
No one could actually be lost in a prairie inside a university arboretum. This was not the wilderness. I was not gonna tell anybody I was lost. Instead, I would follow at a safe distance, and eventually they would leave and I would follow discreetly after them. And soon I lost both sight and sound of the group.
I was more than hot and uncomfortable. I was feeling sick to my stomach and I was starting to panic. I thought it was pretty ridiculous that I did have a cell phone, but what good could that possibly do? I remember thinking, so I do what? I take a picture of this clump of grass or those wallflowers. And send a photo of some random plant to Friends who are on the road between here and home.
What, what good could that possibly do? Call a friend and tell them I lost in a park. Obviously, I couldn't do any of those things for several reasons. First, I'm proud of my sense of direction. I've easily navigated around the world in different cities by myself. There was no way that I was actually seriously lost.
Objectively, it was like being lost in a bathtub. Second, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that my Friends could not possibly help me when they were traveling 60 miles an hour further away from where I stood with every passing second. Still, I was frightened and I was embarrassed that I was frightened, and there was absolutely no one and nothing that could help me.
Did I pray? Well, I expect I probably did because I'm a person. I'm a faith, although I have no memory of what that prayer was and whether it was in earnest or more of the, "oh my God" variety. Eventually, of course, I stumbled out of the prairie. I remember that the staff member working at the gift shop took one look at me, sat me on a chair, had me put my head between my knees, brought me two bottles of water, and stayed close by until I felt well enough to get up and leave.
Shortly thereafter, when I told the story to Friends, the part about having nothing I actually needed for survival at the time, only a stupid cell phone. They spoke as one: "Welling, you could have called the Nature Center..." "Welling, you could have called us and we would've called the Nature Center...." "There was a compass in your cell phone..." "There was probably a map of the arboretum prairie in your cell phone."
I don't know how close I actually came to collapsing, dehydrated, and disoriented off the beaten path, just a few yards away from soccer and refreshment, and now I know that I was connected the entire time to all the help I needed: a powerful network of love and Friendship, as well as a high tech source of liberating knowledge.
Everything and everyone I desperately needed to refresh and rescue me from my ordeal was literally within my grasp, but I was too proud, too panicked and too addlepated to see it and use it. In spiritual terms, I was not looking to the hills for help, and I was actively denying the grace that Living Water could provide.
What if I had recognized the Living Water that was immediately accessible to me and that I refuse to use? The lesson I will never forget is that in times of duress, we humans, or at least this human, can be too cock shore to ask for help. Those of you who read Louise Penny Murder Mysteries will recall that one of Inspector Gamache's four key phrases to Success in life is: "I need help."
This is surely a message of the Psalms as well. Asking for help and receiving help can be a spiritual exercise as well as a practical necessity. It is surely not the case that help only arrives for those who ask for it, or even that help necessarily arrives for those who desperately need it. Our senses are daily battered by the awareness that sometimes help never arrives.
I feel this particularly keenly in my new home state of Minnesota. Where could the love of God possibly be in the turmoil and strife? I don't know. My heart is breaking, and yet my experience tells me even so that it is true, also true that the love that is God often uses human hands to extend succor to those in crucial predicaments.
The Bible, as well as other holy texts, teaches that it is our sacred responsibility as people of faith to be the love of God when we encounter those who are suffering from fear and despair. I am thinking of fellow min Minnesotans blowing whistles to alert neighbors to the presence of ice and waiting and freezing temperatures to provide immediate assistance to release detainees.
As Friends in beloved community, we are called to be helpers just as we are called to ask for help. There are times when asking for help for yourself or for others might just save a life. I look to the hills, I look to living water from once cometh my help. What is your story? There are several queries that you're invited to consider as we break now into small groups and Bre will post these in the chat.
When have you noticed yourself resisting help even when it was walking beside you?
When have you most clearly felt spirit's presence offering support or rescue?
When have you experienced help coming from unexpected or unimagined places?
How do you aspire to make love come true for those in need?
