Who finishes your sentences?

            Cliché says our spouses finish our sentences, especially if we’ve been married a long time. Sometimes our siblings, who have known us since we first spoke “mama” or “dada,” do the job. Maybe our friends, who have heard our stories a hundred times, jump in.

            The other night I had this thought:  God finishes our sentences.

            I was thinking of the recent tragedy of a college senior killed in a car crash. I voiced his name, Ethan, and tried to tell God the anguish of the young man’s family, friends, and classmates. Then I realized, “God already knows.” I remembered Psalm 139:4, “Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely.”

            I remembered Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” Matthew 6:7 – 8.

            I remembered what the Apostle Paul explained in his letter to the Christians in Rome, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God”
Romans 8:26 – 27.

            When we pray, God can finish our sentences, even the garbled, wordless ones. But we have to start.

All scripture is quoted from the New International Version.