A May Day Devotion

ValMay ♦ May 4, 2025 ♦ Leave a comment

“… and the woman came and knelt before Him. ‘Lord, help me!'”— Matthew 15:25

As we enter the month of May, my thoughts turned to the international distress signal: “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!” Repeated three times, this urgent cry for help is rooted in the French word m’aidez which means, “help me.”

In Matthew 15, many profound moments unfold, yet one simple, desperate plea stands out. It comes from a Canaanite woman—descended from a people long at odds with Israel—who, in her anguish, cries out to Jesus, “Lord, help me!”

Joseph Parker, a powerful preacher in 19th-century London and pastor of the City Temple, reflected deeply on this moment. He once wrote of this woman’s desperate appeal:

“Sorrow abbreviates our prayers; sorrow teaches true eloquence. When the heart is in the grip of deadly agony, it knows how to pray. When your child is grievously vexed, when the last hope of your life has been blown out by a sudden and cruel wind—you will know whether prayer is a necessity of life or merely a ritual of convenience.We must feel Christ rather than merely understand Him. He is not the subject of an essay or a topic for debate—He is Christ is the Savior.

“Lord, help me!”…. what a prayer!!

Charles Spurgeon also commented on this cry, calling it:

“A prayer I commend. It is a handy prayer—you can use it when you’re in a hurry,when you’re afraid, when you have no time to kneel. You can pray it as you open your shop or as you rise in the morning. It’s such a handy prayer that I can hardly imagine any circumstance in which it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

So here I am—at the beginning of May—reflecting on these words.

Mayday!

M’aidez!

Lord, help me.

Even so, Lord—help me.