I pondered that question all day after I received a message that, from 6-9 in the evening, or somewhere thereabouts, we should pray for rain. 

We had been excessively dry; some of us hadn’t seen more than an inch of precipitation in the last year.

My mind went back to all the different kinds of prayers I had prayed.

I remembered the time when the pond bank I was walking into the water on suddenly gave way, and I was in over my head.  Literally.  I didn’t know how to swim, and as I began to suffocate in the brown, muddy water, I called out, with all that was in me, for a rescue.  I didn’t make a fancy prayer of it that day.  Nor did I start it or end it in the normal fashion.  In fact, as I bobbed up fewer times than I bobbed down, and my vision started to fade, I really didn’t pronounce any words at all.  At that moment, it became a heart language that screamed out a plea for life. 

Life came in the form of a quarter inch size twig hanging down from the trees surrounding the pond.  My immediate reaction was that it would never hold me, but the One I was begging for life from said, “Just get hold of it, and keep all of your body underwater except your face.”  And it worked.  Because the water took care of holding up my body then, and my face was all that twig had to support.  After a few moments, wherein I chewed up the air around me in great shuddering gasps, I was able to find footing and get myself out of there.

I thought of the prayers we prayed while at the bedside of my good wife’s dad, who had coded twice already.  Prayers of desperation, to be sure, but in this case, vesting what confidence we could in the doctors together with the one we were praying to. 

My prayers didn’t take a long time, in either of those situations.  Neither were they thought out very well.  You don’t spend a lot of time deciding which hand you grab for help in those situations.

I thought back to a couple of prayer meetings I attended as a young person.  One specifically where we all knelt, and anyone could pray.  What I remember most about that meeting, is that the individual prayers didn’t have ‘Amen’ said after them.  It was added at the end in the last prayer prayed by a previously designated person.  In a way, it seemed like we had prayed a long, 30-45 minute prayer that night, spoken by different people, but all one prayer nontheless, with that final Amen.

I remembered the prayers and the feeling of them when I had prayed them, some 10 years ago.  We were experiencing a drought much like we are now.  I remember seeing thunderheads building, just a few miles east of our place it seemed, and I remember how frustrated my prayers were, as I watched when those thunderheads moved away, to the east, every time.  I think, probably due to my lack of faith? maturity? I finally gave up praying, as sort of a silent treatment against the one I was praying to.

I thought of prayers I have prayed, off and on, over the years.  Prayers that, today, still don’t have answers.

I thought of a man, a few thousand years ago, who built an altar to communicate with the one who had been withholding the rain from their land for the previous three years.  I thought of the false prophets who also built an altar, and how they prayed too, but their prayers weren’t answered, and this one man’s prayer was.

And so, it was against this backdrop that I pondered what kind of prayer I would or should pray that evening.

The way I figured, it could go either way.  A group of prayers could be answered as one, or, a single prayer could touch the throne just as easily, and we’d have rain.

But then, another thought fluttered in from somewhere above me, like a bright colored leaf spinning its way down.

Maybe, there isn’t a right or wrong way to pray. 

And, to conclude we know how or why a prayer was or wasn’t answered seems quite presumptuous indeed, when compared to the thoughts of the One who hears our prayers.

And then, another thought fluttered down. 

Maybe, since love is something I deeply appreciate, when shown to me, maybe, then, since God is love, He gets and likes a little of the same feeling as I get when someone loves me, if I choose to give my love to Him.

Then it seemed simple.

Prayers could be a channel for me to send love to God. 

Not every time, obviously, because sometimes, when you are drowning in a muddy pond, you can’t think about love properly.

But on a day when I had time to think about it, I suddenly found myself wanting to pray, to send my love to the One who has been with me all along, whether it rains or not.