"During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them." (Exodus 2:23-25 NIV)
A cry for help is inhuman to ignore. From antiquity, in the most primitive of societies, whenever a cry for help rings out from one quarter, it mobilizes people from all around to come to the aid of the person crying, even if the reason for the cry is yet unknown. When people hear the cry for help coming from a location, they leave everything they are doing and rush to the scene of the cry to offer help. It was an obligation everyone owed to help someone in trouble reaching out in an emergency. This age-old unwritten rule of humanity has saved not a few from situations they are helpless to handle by themselves. Later S.O.S signals with flashing lights, sounds or Morse codes were utilized. Nowadays a cry for help comes in form of dialing an emergency number.
However, these have only to do with beseeching humans to help in desperate situations. There are however many situations in which humans are unable to help. There are even situations in which the cry cannot be heard by humans because it is a cry of the heart, an inner groaning, indiscernible by humans but nonetheless amplified in our hearts. There are things we cannot even share with any human because of their sacredness or privacy or just because no one would understand. They are private cries, hurts and desperate longings that not even a spouse, a parent or the closest friends can grasp which lodge within our hearts.
Take heart. Israel was at such a place in our text. The suffering they were going through was so great and the help of humans was incapable and unavailable that their heavy heart groaned and cried until it reached the hears of the One who can discern the unuttered cries of the heart. Their groaning was a plea, a prayer, probably not uttered in articulate speech, but in the inaudible cries of the heart.
God heard and was concerned about their plight. He remembered His covenant with their fathers and began to bring to light His ongoing preordained plans for deliverance though the man Moses who had been in the desert for forty years.
Here is our lesson. God hears the cries others cannot hear. God responds to desperate faith-filled cries for assistance and He already has a plan for helping you. When you get into such situations when your heart is overwhelmed, when you are unsure which way to go and how to proceed, when it looks as if you are going down and there is no earthly way you could ever win, when you are faced with the impossible, when suffering weighs you down, always remember that there is a God who cares for you. He is concerned about you and He's as near as a cry for help. Look to Him. Dial the heavenly 911. He will uphold you and deliver you!
Decision of the Day
I understand that God hears my cry for help. He even hears the groaning of my heart. I will always turn to Him for help. He is willing to help and deliver in every situation. When my heart is overwhelmed, I will climb on the rock higher than myself. I will cry to Him with all my heart and I will be helped.
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