Angels

So, I have had a couple conversations lately that have been weighing on my mind and there has been a topic that keeps coming up. I keep being told to pray and the Lord will help me or I've been informed that others I know have been praying and asking the Lord for help and so they believe that is where help will come from.
But did you ever stop to consider that I have prayed? Desperately asking for help, for a friend, for compassion, for understanding? Is that not what you have prayed for as well? For help? A friend? Compassion? Understanding?
I am not saying that you shouldn't pray, or that prayer doesn't work (my life and the lives of those around me are testament enough that there is a Christ, a loving God who looks out for us on a daily basis) but what if you're missing the answers?
Remember the story we have been told multiple times over about the man sitting on his rooftop in the midst of a terrible flood? He prayed and prayed for the Lord to save him, to help him. He is then visited by people on a raft, in a boat and lastly at the time of greatest peril a helicopter and they are there to give him a hand to lift him to safety. But he turns them all away saying that, with the greatest of his faith, that the Lord will save him.
I am a firm believer in the idea that the Lord is in the details of our lives. The people with whom we cross paths aren't there merely by coincidence but because we learn from each person who touches our lives for good (or ill, as the case may be). But how many times must we be told that the Lord will send angels to aid us? To save us? To buoy up our spirits? How many times has a person come into your life when you needed it most and you shook your head saying, "The Lord alone must save me." What if He sent that very person? What if He sent you the raft? The boat? The helicopter? What if you are turning away His help because it isn't as obvious as you expected it to be?
Isn't it said that God works in mysterious ways? That He sends angels to do His will when He cannot be immediately by our side?
I am not saying that I am not guilty of turning away the raft, or even the helicopter. Perhaps I have done it more than I will ever be able to count.




So, sadly, I am at work and in between the above and now the fire has been taken out of me... it's been a rather stressful day.
In short, don't turn away something instantly because it seems too beautiful to be true or you don't feel deserving of it. The Lord wouldn't put it there if He didn't mean for you to at least try to incorporate it into your life.
I love you, my friends, please allow me to help you when I offer. It helps me to turn my thoughts outward. If you don't want it, please be considerate of the fact that it may have taken me a lot of courage to offer in the first place. Sorry.