Twice this week I prayed for rain.
Twice this week—it fell, not a lot, not heavy and flooding, but enough to sign my prayers were heard.
All spring and early summer, all it did was rain. Finally, it stopped, and when it did, I did not pray believing it still would fall; but it didn’t and the shallow roots of plants complacent in the bounty withered of a drought.
We are waiting for the corn to dry; but unnatural death—premature—in effect of drought that came left dead stalks and wet ears that, absent cycle of finishing life are slow and struggling to dry.
I prayed for the rain, not for the corn, but for the pastures to regrow—forage heading into fall—and for the late planted beans needing hope for possibility to raise any crop at all.
The beans are still green and every drop is aid to a chance for something—hope toward a fruitful finish.
I prayed for rain, and answer came. Maybe it is sign and message for what I often read or hear but seldom practice—God wants us to pray for everything, even the little things.
God listens. God answers—even when not and as we hope, but in way that is always for our best; even when such is to continue on, living in faith, when we feel we are not heard.
Goodness, blessing, comes in time. Like fruitful harvest from the seeds we sow; all must run its life and course for only at end do we learn the bounty of our labors, love and sweat and sometimes tears: thirty, fifty, and a hundred-fold.