A story on the theme of Psalm 3

Theme:  Prayer begins in a realization that we cannot help ourselves, so we must reach out to God. 

from Eugene Peterson's "Psalms:  Prayers of the Heart" study guide:  "Help!" is the basic prayer.  We are in trouble, deep trouble.  If God cannot get us out, we are lost; if God can get us out, we are saved.

Change the names and genders and parental configurations as works best for your context.

Lindy didn’t like to ask for help. She would always rather “do it myself.” But this time doing it by herself wasn’t working and she was getting worried. Sometimes she did sewing projects with her mom. Her mom even let her work the sewing machine when they were making a skirt for one of Lindy’s dolls. Her mom bent over her and with her hands on Lindy’s hands they guided the fabric through the machine.

Lindy had been carefully watching her mom the whole time and was sure she knew how to use the sewing machine. She watched her put the thread in. She watched what levers she flipped up and down when she put the fabric in place to sew it. She watched what pedal she pushed to make the machine run, forward and backward. She decided that it was time for her to sew by herself. And because Lindy’s mom wasn’t home right then and her dad was out in the yard working, she thought she could have lots of time to try what she saw her mom doing.

But five minutes later, she felt sick. She realized that she shouldn’t have been doing it herself. In front of her on the machine was a ball of tangled thread and the fabric all bunched up. She pushed the pedal to back up, but that only made it worse. She pushed it forward and more thread got tangled. Then the machine stopped working. Had she broken it? What should she do? What would her mom say?

She just stood there in shock and said, “Help, God!” Was that a prayer? She thought about it and guessed it was. God could help her. She got quiet and kept talking to God and then she got a feeling for what she should do. God seemed to be saying, “Lindy, go out in the yard. Get your dad and tell him what happened.” 

Well, it wasn’t her dad’s sewing machine so maybe he wouldn’t be as upset as she knew her mother would be...but she wasn’t sure. What would he say?

She did go out and talked to her dad. It was hard. It took her a while to tell him everything. He nodded as she told her story and said that they should go in and look at the machine. He didn’t think that whatever Lindy had done could break the machine.

Once they got inside, they tried the machine. It was still stuck, but Lindy’s dad took a scissors and began to cut away the fabric and the thread and pretty soon the mess was all cleared away. They tried the machine again and it ran just fine. Just then they heard the back door open and Lindy’s mom say, “Hi. I’m home.”