Immediately the father of the child cried out and said,

“I believe; help my unbelief!”

- Mark 9:24 (ESV)

Last Saturday as I was cleaning out some old files, I came across a journal entry from the day after my younger brother’s unexpected death.

At the end, I wrote this prayer, the only complete sentence in the entire entry:

“Lord, help me to love you and trust you more.”

That’s it. Nothing spectacular. Nothing eloquent. But with all the words I could manage to express from the very depths of my grieving 16-year-old self.

In the midst of circumstances far different than 10 years ago, but requiring every bit as much faith and trust in His Sovereignty, how I long for that prayer to never be far from my heart, to mean more today than it did then, to draw me even closer to the Faithful One.

“I believe; help my unbelief!”

“Oh, my hope is in the Lord, forevermore…”