undertake for me!

Father, i know that You are powerful to save, and You alone hold our names on Your hands. Your arm is not short, nor is it weak and incapable, nor do You lack the love necessary to accomplish wonders, nor do You delight in unrighteousness. Father, You know what i will ask even before i ask it, You grant me permission and the words to ask it, and You mediate and correct my prayers. whom have i in heaven but You? and who is my counselor, my comforter, who can wipe the tears from my eyes?

Father, my great-uncle is in the intensive care unit in northridge. i plead for his physical life in a selfish manner, Father, for truly it would be happier for him to sing in Your presence, but i fear that those brilliant songs of praise would not drown out the cries of anguish and grief here. i pray for my mother's sake, that You would not take her true physical father from her from the same illness You plagued her false physical father. why did it have to be liver cancer, Father? of all the diseases to strike and test Your children with, why did You have to mirror her father's? did she not see the parallels before? i suppose if she never noticed, then the realization came at a deadly irony. Your will be done, and i will praise You, no matter how soon You call him into Your presence.

Father, he is one of the faithful leaders of Your church. he lived a life of faithfulness at home, loving only one wife and raising also his brother's children besides the blessings You gave him of his own. he leads prayer for the sick, so that i was the one who had to lead Your people to prayer on sunday night. he has not a penny to his name (he  and his wife live with their children!), yet he spent his money, his goods, his talents, his health, his body, his love for the advancement of Your kingdom, at home, in the church body, and in the world.

but Father, not so was the life of the false father. he was self-absorbed, so that he was incapable of loving others--the ones You gave him to love especially. he was not generous, but he built bigger barns to die in. he was not loving, but he took more wives to fail. he said "i love you," but how can i know? how do i even know if he rests with You if he gave his own children scorpions for eggs, snakes for fish?

this is sorrow on sorrows for me, Father. please please please don't take my mother's true father to glory yet! let him serve You just a little longer, and praise You in the flesh.

yet above it all, do not let us worry. for You have called him Your own, and the fairest blood, the purest blood, the fount of living water flows over his head. the function of the liver is to root out impurities, yet Your Spirit does a greater service in rooting out the impurities of our heart of hearts. the liver purifies the blood, yet we already know that our blood is insufficient to bring us to Life.

this is enough.

"I [Hezekiah, faithful king of Judah, son of David] said,
'In the cutting off of my days I shall go to the gates of the grave;
I am deprived of the residue of my years.'

I said,
'I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living;
I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.

My age is departed and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent;
I have cut off like a weaver my life.
He will cut me off with pining sickness;

from day even to night will You make an end of me.
I reckoned til morning that , as a lion, so will He break all my bones;
from day even to night will You make an end of me.

Like a crane of a swallow, so did I chatter;
I did mourn like a dove;
Mine eyes fail with looking upward.

O LORD, I am oppressed; undertake for me!

What shall I say?
He has both spoken to me, and He Himself has done it.
I will go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.

O LORD, by these things men live,
and in all these things is the life of my spirit;
so will You recover me and make me to live.

Behold, for peace I had great bitterness;
but You have in love for my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption,
for You have cast all my sins behind Your back.

For the grave cannot praise You, death cannot celebrate You;
they that go down into the pit cannot hope for Your truth.
The living, the living, he shall praise You, as I do this day;
the father to the children shall make known Your truth.

The LORD was ready to save me;
therefore we will sing my songs with the stringed instruments
all the days of our life in the house of the LORD.