Be With Me Lord, When I Am in Trouble
March 9, 2025 | By Isaac Oberman DC ‘26
image description: flowers in rain
Lent is a season of competing natures.
Like Advent, Lent is a preparation for the joys coming during Easter. In this way, it is a season of waiting and hope. However, it is also a season of reflection and repentance for our previous failings. Lent forces us to look inward at our daily sins and outward at the cross, the source of our hope. A reflection on sin informs us how we have caused pain to ourselves and others, calling us to redirect our energies toward improving ourselves, our faith, and our world. Passivity and activity come together to make Lent a season of complete renewal. Like a flower in spring, we bloom.
But like a flower, growth isn’t easy. Like a gentle flowering bud, we are fragile as we start to bloom. The refrain for today’s Psalm, “Be with me Lord, when I am in trouble,” is not just a repetitive mantra. It is a nurturing lifeline during this Lenten Season. Human life is one of trouble. All of us have seen pain, experienced pain, and caused pain. All of us have failed to help others and have been failed by others. Calling on the Lord is a cry for protection and help for our continued growth.
So, we call on the Lord. Jesus knows our pain. Jesus knows our trouble. Jesus knows when we have fallen short and lifts us out of the dust to help us try again. The Gospel reading for today comes from Luke 4, which is the story of Christ’s forty-day fast in the wilderness and temptation by the devil. This is the model of our Lenten sacrifices, where we fast and pray to be drawn closer to God. As the devil tempted Jesus and showed all the ways his suffering could end, Jesus rebuked the devil with Scripture and put His trust in His Father. Not only was Jesus with the Father, but the Father was with and in Jesus. This reversal of the directionality of the trinity reminds us of the passive and active together: He is with us, and we are with Him.
It is in a flower’s nature to grow and bloom, yet it is also difficult. It is in our nature, too; God has just given us the extra mechanism of our active will. Calling God to be with us requires us to actively receive him. We need to ask the gardener to water us and nurture us before we can grow, but then, oh, how we bloom!
Be With Me Lord, When I Am in Trouble.