When we are caught between a rock and hard pan it may be as Paul writes in Romans 8:26. “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

A passage near the end of Cecilia Ekback’s novel, “Wolf Winter,” catches what Paul is getting at.  The novel is set in Lapland in 1717.

“After his conversation with the bishop, Olaus had tried to return to the Lappmark.  He hadn’t got far.  The thaw set in.  He had returned and spent the days on his knees in the barren room in the bishop’s residence, in agony facing choices, unable to pray, unable to do anything else, and it wasn’t until toward the end of his stay that he had felt something else, someone, and he wasn’t going to say it had been the voice of God…but he had felt compassion amid pain.”