Prayer for young adults

Lord Jesus, in Luke 23 a group of women followed You to the cross. They could not stop what was happening. They walked with You anyway and cried out loud.

I am better at caring from far away than at being with someone on a hard road. I will text a friend who is going through a long crisis, but I will not go to her apartment when being there is the hard part. I will avoid a relative whose grief I do not know how to fix because I have no answer to offer. I cannot just sit with someone in their pain without trying to manage it.

Those women show me something I am not naturally good at. They could not stop the cross. They could walk beside it. Their presence, their tears, their not leaving, that was the gift. It did not have to fix anything to matter.

So today, put me in that kind of company. When a friend is suffering and does not need me to solve it, let me sit beside her without a plan. When someone I love is on a hard road, let me walk a part of it with them, even when I have nothing to say. The crying can be shared even when the rescue cannot be done. Train me to move from far-off care to real presence. I do not need to fix in order to be there. I just need to be willing to walk.

Amen.