Strengthen My Hands

Nehemiah 6:9  "They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, 'Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.'  But I prayed, 'Now strengthen my hands.'"

When I think of building -- or rebuilding, rather -- a wall (not that I think of it often), the first thing that comes to mind is Robert Frost's poem, "Mending Wall."  The poem is famous for the line, "Good fences make good neighbors," but read it again.  It is not Frost saying this, but instead, his neighbor.  Frost asks rather, why build a wall between two orchards?  Besides:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

But Frost is thinking much more deeply about the wall than is his neighbor, who knows only the simple maxim, good fences make good neighbors.

Over 2,400 years ago another wall was rebuilt, again by a thoughtful man, but not a man with the leisure to wonder what he was walling in or walling out.  He knew too well.  Nehemiah came to a shattered Jerusalem with a mandate to rebuild its wall and thus re-fortify the city, which was under constant threat from a litany of bellicose neighbors.  Thirteen years earlier a priest named Ezra had returned to Jerusalem to be a spiritual leader to the Jews who had left their exile in the Babylonian empire and made their way back to their ancestral home.  But without fortifications to protect the city, Ezra's work was largely in vain.

Word of this predicament reached Nehemiah in Persia. Nehemiah was a "cupbearer" to King Artaxerxes, and whatever that position fully meant, he certainly had access to the king and a degree of familiarity.  Seeing his downcast face the King asked Nehemiah what was wrong, and emboldened by God Nehemiah asked the king for permission to oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls.  Permission was granted, and Nehemiah went away on his mission.

Nehemiah rallied the people and led them with great skill in rebuilding the wall.  Above all else he withstood the intrigue of enemies bent on breaking his resolve.  When an open letter arrived as a scare tactic, accusing him of preparing to lead a rebellion against the Persian king, Nehemiah responded as he always had -- with prayer: "But now, O God, strengthen my hands." (ESV)

The job was completed in a matter of 52 days.

I see this verse as a true gem of the Old Testament.  We find here a man involved in seemingly mundane labor -- extraordinary in its historical context, yes, but still, he is leading an urban building project -- and yet in the midst of his troubles and stress he manages to call upon God in a way that is both simple and poignant.  It is a cry for help that echoes throughout the ages.  In a spiritual sense it is echoed in the Gospel of Mark, when the father of a demon-possessed boy says to Jesus, "I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:24)

On a daily basis we are attacked by enemies.  Often these enemies are not attacking us directly but instead, like Nehemiah's enemies, they are using our fears and insecurities against us. You know who and what your enemies are, and how they most like to threaten you.  Each of us has our own enemies to deal with in our relationships, our finances, our workplace, our bodies.  Yet also on a daily basis we can go to God and say, "Strengthen my hands."