It’s too dry for June 1. For the third year in a row drought conditions were parching Montana. I could feel the relentless heat on my face and arms as I headed across the farmyard to the house.
Earlier in the spring when we took the cows to grass, instead of new crested wheat greening the hills and creek bottoms, brittle brown stems from last year crunched under the cows’ hooves.
Normally, snow pack in the mountains fed the rivers through the summer, but now the rivers were nothing more than useless shallow streams….
Inside I spoke to my friend Jeanie on the phone. “What can we do about this drought?” I asked.
“Wanda, you’re good with words. Write a prayer to send out. Something to get everyone praying.”
I can’t do that, I thought. But, then, I sat down at my computer and began to type: “We need to pray for rain to fall across our state of Montana.”
The words flowed. “Soft, gentle rain over our mountains, steady, even rain moving across our prairies. Rain soaking deep into the ground…. We have no covering for our peaks. Send the snow to mantle their tops.” Snow! That’s outrageous. It’s June already. But the words kept coming.
I emailed the prayer to family and friends and urged them to email it to others. I don’t know how many people prayed that day, but on June 4 I got an email from my sister: “Missoula got six inches of snow.”
The next message was from a friend in Libby in the northwest corner of Montana: “It’s pouring! We’ve been getting downpours all day!” I rushed outside and looked at the sky.
Clouds, heavy gray ones, with rain. One, two, three drops falling ever so gently on my face, each one an answer to prayer.
Download your FREE ebook, A Prayer for Every Need, by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.
