Pray For Rain

When I was in high school, Pray For Rain was one of my favourite bands. I was an onofficial but highly passionate and somewhat spindly groupie. It's still got a very nostolgic place in my heart.
I never thought it was something I'd actually do. :)

This weekend, a lot of people around Brisbane rallied to pray for rain. (In case you haven't heard, we're in the midst of a pretty serious drought.) Sunday morning -- yesterday morning -- a bunch of people prayed at the same time, probably a culminating event for what a lot of us have been doing randomly for awhile now.
And today it rained. Most of the afternoon it rained, and it's 10:40 at night and it's still drizzling. The forcast is for rain all the rest of this week. Now we wait and pray and hope that a lot of it falls in the cachement areas, and the dam levels can begin to rise again. Either way, it's really good to have the rain.

Today Danny and I entered into a contract to buy a house. A house much better than we thought we could afford, and one that we feared we wouldn't actually get because another contract was in place before us. That contract fell through. We got the official contract on the house today. I felt just a little bit blessed-beyond-deserving, and a little bit like the "yee of little faith."

Sometimes I pray, and nothing seems to happen. (Maybe I feel a bit more at peace, but I don't see what I'd like to call "results") And after this happens a few times, I don't really expect anything to happen. (Except a greater sense of peace and the ability to handle my prayers not being answered. And I think I'm usually ok with that.) And then, when we pray and something does happen, I am so unexpecting it that I'm almost unbeleiving.

How can I possibly predict what prayers will be answered and how? Who makes the crazy rules I sometimes find in my head? -- that I couldn't hear him for what felt like such a long time, he surely won't answer now. Or that he's been blessing us in so many ways, something's bound to go terribly wrong soon.
hmmm... I know who breaks those rules.

I wish my faith were stronger and more patient, and didn't expect him to play silly games with us. Maybe that should be my next prayer. I think in the weeks to come, we're going to need a lot of that peace and faith stuff... to face all the overwhelming and exciting.

May you be blessed with all the rain you need and don't expect.