Expectations

My pastor tells a story of expectations. He preached in a small church in South Dakota before he came to us and the community at one point had been going through a drought. They had called together a prayer service in order to call upon God to send rains. He tells that story with a bit of regret saying that he should have been the first to bring an umbrella. No one brought an umbrella.

Why do we continue to pray for rain but lack the sense to bring an umbrella? Do we really think that God would not send us his blessing? Perhaps he doesn't because we are not expecting him to. He therefore, would not be disappointing us, we disappoint ourselves.

I am no better. I have continued to struggle with the whole aspect of prayer: praying with the un-hope hope this world so generously gives instead of the hope that God has already fulfilled. I need to pray with the expectation that the rain has already fallen, that the earth has already flourished: not that it will come, or that it is well on its way, I need to pray that the things that are not are in deed already.

Anything less is not prayer. Anything less is talking to a hole in the wall.

That is the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame walking, and the dead living.

That is courage. That is prayer.