Why is it that we so often wait until we find ourselves in dire straits before crying out to God?
It really makes no sense. We know, both by the Scriptures, and by our own experience, that God is always there when we call. In Christ we have a High Priest who is personally touched by our feelings. When we hurt, He is affected. Our prayers are heard by a loving and merciful Lord.

In spite of that which we know to be true, we still typically procrastinate actually calling upon the Lord for help until the last minute. It’s not that we didn’t see our predicament coming, and progressively getting worse. We had been living under an ominous cloud for some time, but instead of making it an urgent matter of prayer, we kept waiting, and coming up with one unsuccessful solution after another.

There is an encouraging verse in the Psalms that speaks to this.

Psalms 118:5 I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.

Again, the specific events are left out, but we are told that it was written during a time of ‘distress.’ The word literally means, ‘pain or strait.’ There were trials making life pretty miserable. Being in ‘straits’ means to be pressed, or squeezed. I get the sense of going down into a deep, dark cave. In order to proceed, you must go through an opening that is barely large enough to pass. Once you have committed yourself, you get so wedged in, you suddenly wonder if you can move. Your chest is squeezed between the rock on either side making it harder and harder to breathe. There is no light, increasing your panic level. The thought that you may not be able to free yourself begins to make your blood pressure sky rocket. Within only a few seconds you find yourself pressed into a full-blown panic.

It is this mental state into which the author is racing. His world is caving in around him, making him wonder if he can go on. If he fails to proceed, the life as he knows it may come to an end. He was definitely in ‘distress.’

In that fearsome, panic-stricken condition, he cried out to the Lord. Thankfully, the Lord heard him, and answered him. His answer came by being placed in a ‘large place.’ That’s an odd way of describing his answer. The wording actually means an open space or enlarged area. In contrast to the pressed position he had been in, what could be better than being freed into a large space?

The actual answer is once again not mentioned; simply that God released him from his pressure and gave him room to breathe. To the one stuck in the cave, being able to be freed into a large, air-filled room would be the best present he could receive.

Instead of waiting until the last moment, how about we keep the communication continually open with the Lord. Maybe by doing so, we won’t find ourselves stuck in a rock, unable to breathe.