Help for Our Unbelief in Heavy Times

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? —Psalm 8:3-4

Things feel heavy. We’re only five weeks into 2026 and, yet, I’ve heard it spoken with exasperation by more tired souls than I can count, “What a year it’s been.” From the micro to the macro, from the personal to our collective experience, we are holding a lot.

Here’s a prayer exercise I participated in recently. Take a deep breath and exhale. Reach as far as you can above your head, and stretch, and slowly bring your arms back down to your sides. Then, bring your hands up in front of you and open them with your palms facing upward. Close your eyes, and think about whatever it is that you are holding right now. Stress. Grief. Pain. Anger. Lament. Frustration. Exhaustion. Anxiety. Despair. Now, look deeper into those heavy burdens. What are they symptoms of? What do they represent that you are holding? Visualize it. Name it.

And once you see clearly the weight or the many weights that you are carrying, ask God to take them and hold them for you. Take a moment to let the Steadfast Love that will not let you go lift the rocks from your hands that are keeping you from rising up to meet this day, and all the blessings and challenges that await you. Meditate on that for a few moments, and then take another deep breath, exhale, and open your eyes.

When I participated in that prayer exercise that a clergy colleague of mine led with all manner of gracious contemplation with her comforting chaplain’s voice, I felt a mixture of assurance and skepticism. I trust that God is good and gracious, more awesome than my most spiritually enlightened thoughts can ever comprehend; and I believe what the old hymn sings, that God’s eye is on the sparrow, and I know God watches me; but I still have a hard time believing that the Holy One, the Creator of every good thing, Who has the whole world in Her hand, would bother to take heavy burdens from my hands when everything in the world—far beyond what just my spec of a self is holding—is so heavy.

Struggling with that, I came across this simple sentence from a collection of daily prayers: “O God, you stretch out the universe, and wash our feet with your hands.” Wow! God paints the cosmos on an infinite canvas, and God kneels down to comfort us in our finite humanity; to lift the heavy burdens we are holding so that we can keep rising up to meet the endless hope of each new day.

Prayer: Everlasting, ever-loving God, in my weariness and my deep lament at the heaviness of these days, I hold my hands open to you and ask that you would help my unbelief. I know that Jesus told the man begging for his son to be healed that all things can be done for those who believe, but even that man who loved his son with all his heart said, “I believe,” and in the same breath he said, “Help my unbelief!” That resonates with me, O God. Things feel heavy, and I believe that you’ve got this, but I know in my heart of hearts that my belief is shaky. So, even when I’m so weighed down with the troubles of today that my skepticism keeps me from taking refuge in your goodness and grace, come to me, I pray, and sit with me in my unbelief. Thank you for stretching out the universe and still having time and space enough for me and all this stuff I’m carrying. Things are heavy, but knowing that you are with me makes it all bearable, navigable, possible to rise up and carry on. Thank you. Amen.