Romans 8:27 “And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.”
One day when Elisha was very young, I encountered a situation where I had to advocate on his behalf. Elisha was three years old when I came to pick him up from daycare and my heart broke when I saw him sitting in a high chair with his shoe laces tied to each side of the chair watching television while the other children were sitting quietly in front of him on the floor. When I asked the daycare provider why Elisha had been tied to the chair, she quickly responded that she didn’t want him touching her television. You see she had a large TV with a screen that was very low and that the kids could reach and she had trained the other toddlers not to touch it, however, because my little boy did not understand, she felt the need to separate him and ostracize him. We left her daycare that day, but over the years, I have learned to protect my child when we have had confrontations in restaurants, on planes, in bathrooms, at the mall, at special events, at theme parks, and in pubic by mean and hateful people who don’t like the noises that came out of my non-verbal child. We have left when we have been asked not to come back to barber shops, water parks, after school programs and even church and Sunday School. Every time it happened, it always surprised me, but there was a deep sadness that would set in and make me feel incredibly lonely and isolated, unwanted, and unloved.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” Our God is the source of every true act of comfort. He comes to us in the middle of our sufferings and troubles and He strengthens us and gives us courage and boldness to go on and then, we in turn can come alongside someone else who is going through a difficult time and show them the comfort we have received from our God.
As a result of my son’s disability and my unique relationship with him, the inordinate amount of advocacy that was required on my part to defend him in a hostile world, I developed a intimate bond with my child that was unlike the bond I had with my typical developing children. Of course, there is a special relationship with my other boys, but as they grew older and more self-sufficient, their need for protection from me and my husband diminished and eventually, they must come to develop a dependency upon Christ as their Heavenly Father and there is a letting go that occurs as they leave our home and go out into the world on their own. This letting go never occurred with Elisha because he needed me to step in and make sure he was not mistreated and that he was protected from harm. In the same way, this is how our Father in Heaven intercedes on our behalf. He knows us far better than we know ourselves. The Holy Spirit is right there coming alongside of us, helping us, protecting us, teaching us and praying for us. No words are necessary because the Father understands and agrees with what the Spirit thinks and because He knows exactly what we need. In His providence, God orchestrates every event in life, even suffering, to accomplish both our temporal and eternal benefit, and He uses all of it to His glory and to our benefit. As the good shepherd, Jesus, our Savior, sees the heart of a hurting people, He detects our needs and does what is best for each one of us without ever being told and in accordance to His good will.
– Melody
