"Can i go with u ... ?"

I almost missed the penciled words. The offering envelope was a hymnal bookmark during last Sunday’s worship service. As I stood to sing the recessional hymn, I held the envelope in my hand … and as I sang, I glanced down and saw the words. They silenced me in my singing.  Someone had scribbled on the envelope, “Can i go with u cauz I’ll be left alone!?”

In some way, we are all psalmists, aren’t we? We whisper breath prayers … words of praise, of lamentation, of wonder, of waiting and of desiring to be in God’s presence. Was I holding the very words of a psalmist in my hand? “Oh God, my cries are but a hollow echo in the thoughts of your absence. Can i go with u cauz I’ll be left alone!? In this aloneness, my soul waits for you … in your assurance, I trust that I will never be apart from you.”

As I read the penciled message over and over again, I could almost hear these words whispered in a garden called Gethsemane. “They have all scattered and I am alone. Can I go with u cauz I’ll be left alone!? Abba, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done.”

And as I held this offering envelope in my hands a little longer, now knowing that I would take the words home with me and keep them as a precious gift, I realized that it was on this very pew and in this spot where I gave my life to Christ. There was a deep aloneness in that moment … and then a holy assurance that I was no longer alone. In a way, these penciled words scrawled on an offering envelope and noticed by me on Sunday were my own words so very long ago. “Can I go with u cauz I’ll be left alone!?

It seems right that these words were written on an "offering" envelope. God's answer to this question is and will always be “YES, COME WITH ME!”