Groanings That Have No Words, and Somebody Is Praying

The cart bay at the far end has a wonky gate and nobody uses it, which is why she parks down there, which is why nobody has seen her.

Twenty past six. Boot open. Two bags of shopping in and one on the ground and she is going to put it in, in a minute, in a second, and instead she is standing there with one hand on the trunk lid.

And it comes up again.

Third evening this week. Same parking lot. Nothing has happened. She has had a completely unremarkable day at a job she does not hate, and she rang her sister at lunch and they laughed about their mother, and there is a normal amount of money in the account.

It takes about ninety seconds. Then she puts the last bag in, shuts the trunk, sits in the driver's seat for a moment, and drives home and cooks.

She has started to be frightened by it. Not by the crying. By the absence of a reason for it, because she is a woman who understands her own life, and a thing with no cause is the beginning of a story about something being wrong with her.

Come and stand by the wonky gate with me a minute. Because there is a verse in Romans about a person who has no words and I do not think you have ever been told who is doing the talking.

Somebody is praying and it is not you

Romans 8 is a chapter about a whole creation groaning, and then it narrows down to one person and says something extraordinary.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.Romans 8:26

Read it in order, because the order does the work.

We know not what we should pray for as we ought. That is stated as the normal condition. Not a lapse. Not a bad patch. Paul says it about himself and about everybody, in the present tense.

The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us. So when the words are not there, something is still going on, and the something is not being generated by the person who cannot find the words.

With groanings which cannot be uttered. Not merely unspoken. Un-utterable. A sound with no language available for it.

Now put yourself in it, standing by a trunk lid with a bag on the asphalt.

You are experiencing something that has a name in that chapter, and the name given to it is intercession rather than a symptom. That is not a way of making a hard week sound spiritual; Romans 8:26 puts the groanings and the interceding in one sentence and attributes both to the Spirit, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes an apostle's letter and stands it up in a supermarket parking lot at twenty past six. Something wordless in you is not evidence of a fault. It may well be evidence of company.

Now the second half, and it is about the frightening part, which is the absence of a cause.

You are a woman who understands her own life, and this does not fit, and so you have started building the only explanation available to somebody with no data, which is that something is wrong with you.

Let me put another possibility beside it, without insisting on it. Sometimes a person carries a great deal for a long time without putting any of it down, and then something in them starts putting it down without asking permission, and it comes out at twenty past six in a parking lot because that is the only ninety seconds in the week when nobody needs anything.

That is not a breakdown. That is a body doing something sensible at an inconvenient time.

You have been carrying without setting down, and what is happening in that parking lot may be a release rather than a warning. Psalm 62:8 says pour out your heart before Him, and pouring out is the same physical picture as what has been happening to you, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an emptying a safe thing rather than a frightening one.

What I will not tell you, and what to do about it practically

Let me be careful, because you deserve honesty more than you deserve comfort.

I do not know why you are crying. It might be God stirring something. It might be grief you never gave any room to. It might be exhaustion, or hormones, or a season, or the fact that you have not had a week off in two years.

And if this goes on, or it deepens, or it starts arriving in the middle of the day, please go and talk to a doctor. That is not a lack of faith and I would say it to anybody I loved. Bodies are real, and God made them, and there is nothing unspiritual about having yours looked at.

What I can tell you is what the verse tells you, and it is not a diagnosis. It is that you are not alone in the ninety seconds, and that Somebody with more understanding of you than you have is praying in you while you cannot.

You have Somebody interceding in you at exactly the moment you have nothing to say, and He is not waiting for you to compose yourself first. Romans 8:27 says He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, and it is the Holy Spirit who is both the One praying and the One being understood, which means nothing in that parking lot is going unheard.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it does more than say fine at work.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed there is. Not how well you can explain your own evenings. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.