"Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"

O LifeAlert. This weekend the words from the LifeAlert commercials of my childhood have been ringing in my ears. Without downplaying the danger of elderly people falling down, those commercials are so comically quotable.

I don't even know if they are on TV anymore, much less if LifeAlert is still a viable company. But regardless, if you have ever seen the commercials, you know what I am talking about. If you haven't, here's a nice little visual-imagine this scene coupled with the flat, rehearsed cry of "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" and you get the picture.

But anyway, I was recalling the words in a spiritual sense-how, because of sin, the cry from the heart of humanity is indeed

"Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"

It what our hearts cry after we fall into our own patterns of sin, despair, adverse circumstances, weariness, confusion-whatever makes us feel like we are helpless with on our backs on the floor, unable to get up. We might attempt to lift ourselves up and find that we can't. So we cry,

"Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"

And this is prayer. It might possibly be Jesus' favorite prayer, because it gives Him free reign to

Come running,
Lift us up,
And hold us close to Him.

Luke 15:11-32