“In the day when I cried thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul.”
— Psalm 138:3 (King James Version)
It is 6:15 on a Monday morning, and you are already tired. The week hasn't started so much as ambushed you — an inbox blinking with problems, a bill you've read three times hoping the number would change, a phone call you've been rehearsing and dreading. You pour the coffee. You say, half under your breath, the oldest prayer there is: help. Not eloquent. Not theological. Just one syllable flung upward from a kitchen still dark at the windows.
That is exactly the moment this psalm was written for. Notice its order of events. The cry comes first — plain, undecorated, honest. And the answer that comes back is not a solved problem or a rearranged schedule. It is strength in the soul. God does not always lift the weight; sometimes He enlarges the one who must carry it.
St. Augustine, the fourth-century bishop of Hippo who spent a restless youth chasing everything but peace before finding it, understood this from the inside. He taught that God gives what He commands — that when we are asked to do the hard thing, grace arrives not as an excuse from the task but as the power to meet it. The command and the capacity come together. You are not being told to be strong on your own; you are being met.
Centuries later, Teresa of Ávila — a Spanish reformer who ran convents, wrangled bureaucracies, and traveled brutal roads in poor health — knew this same interior fortitude. She was famously practical about hardship, insisting that patience and steady trust would carry a soul through what impatience never could. She did not wait to feel mighty before she moved. She leaned on a strength that was given, then took the next step.
Here is the encouragement to carry into today: your cry is not weakness, and it is not wasted. The people who accomplished durable things were rarely the ones who felt invincible — they were the ones who asked, and then rose. So make the call. Open the inbox. Have the conversation. You may find, as this ancient singer did, that the strength you lacked at 6:15 quietly arrives by the time you actually need it — not before, but not too late.
A Prayer for Today
When I cry out today, meet me. Where my own strength runs thin, steady my soul with a courage I did not manufacture, and help me take the next small step in front of me. Thank You for answering, even before I have found the right words. Amen.