I don’t know about where you live but here on our farm, it’s past being dry and moving quickly into a desert category. Watering the garden and flowers has become a full-time job. As a farmer, we usually talk about the inches of rain, even the tenths of an inch, but this year we brag about the hundredths of an inch we got. Showers seem to pop up all around us, in fact, someone three miles down the road got about two inches one time while our driveway wasn’t damp. So what else is there to do but pray for rain?

That got me thinking, should you pray for rain? In the big scheme of things to pray for, is the need for rain the one that tops the list? Bottom line, is rain really a prayer-worthy item?

On a typical daily basis, think of all the things we ask or pray that God will intervene. We pray for safe travels, a lost puppy to be returned, and even missing car keys. Saying a prayer just seems to be what we do when all else fails, at least when all else fails we have control over.

Over the past couple of years, prayer, and asking others for prayers has become pretty much a common event for us. We asked for prayers when Suzanne was diagnosed with cancer, then asked for prayers when she was heading into radiation and chemotherapy; more prayers for her surgery, then the clinical trial she enrolled in, and now every few months for her follow-up tests. These events seemed prayer worthy to us and evidently, to many of you as those prayers were answered as a result and she is still with us today. So praying for health-related requests seems reasonable and prayer worthy.

But what does the Bible and specifically what did Jesus tell us was pray worthy? In one simple prayer that we all know by heart, He shared how and what we should pray for, in a nutshell: That what God wants is what we should welcome; the food we need to survive; to be forgiven; help stay away from things that will get us in trouble and to keep those things away from us.

I didn’t hear anything about rain in the Lord’s Prayer, did you? Actually, I didn’t hear much about any of the usual stuff we pray for, including someone’s health. So is prayer the right vehicle to reach God’s door about rain? Should prayer be more about your connection to God and less about your needs? Do we need to have different prayerful conversations with God; Thankful, Forgiving, and Requesting? I know I don’t have the answers. In the meantime, I’m still going to pray for rain.

When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:13-14

UPDATE: Got some rain today!!! The biggest rain event since mid-April. That doesn’t mean I’m going to stop praying for more.