Georgia Prays For Rain, I Pray For Reason

Atlanta, Georgia: ‘Gov Sonny Perdue stepped up to a podium outside the State Capitol on Tuesday and led a solemn crowd of several hundred people in a prayer for rain on his drought-stricken State’ (Greg Bluestein, November 13, news.aol.com). The Governor was joined by other State elected officials (James Salzer & Jim Galloway, November 13, ajc.com). Here is man in trouble, forgetting that he himself has declared the separation of his Church from his State.

I’m not surprised many a politician says one thing and does another. In May, Prime Minister John Howard asked churchgoers to pray for rain to end the drought that has devastated crops and farmers in Australia (Greg Bluestein, November 13, ap.google.com). In the US, we are reminded that George Washington declared ‘a day of prayer and thanksgiving’ and Harry Truman instituted a ‘National Day of Prayer.’ Does that mean that the more astute politicians acknowledge that there is a power higher than any or all politicians combined?

This is a reminder that Human Rights is good, but not as good as Divine Rain when faucets in kitchens are running dry because the reservoir in the lake is running low on water as the streams that feed it are coming in trickles. These are the times when we become aware of the value of water – because now this liquid is very precious to us, as we imagine the tap running dry in 90 days counting from October 10 (data from GBC, November 13, prayer.gabaptist.org). Lake Lanier can hit its lowest point ever, 21 feet below normal, later this month (TAU, ‘Georgia Praying For Rain,’ wjbf.com). Lanier can dry up altogether in less than 90 days (Ben Whitford, ‘Water Wars,’ November 2, plentymag.com), and that will kill the crops and finish the fish stocks in Alabama and Florida. The crops and the fish are precious; the water is priceless.

In response to the drought and the danger, the Georgia Baptist Convention (GBC) came up with a Prayer Guide for rain, which is in pdf format and can be downloaded. I wish rain can be downloaded as easily as the GBC pdf. And what does that mean, Prayer Guide: They aren’t taking chances with people praying guided only by their hearts?

On September 4, the Director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) declared a Level 4 drought across the northern third of Georgia (GBC, cited). Concerned, the GBC selected November 4 as the Day of Prayer. I can imagine plenty of prayers that went up to Heaven; I can also imagine hardly a drop of rain coming down from up there. What’s the matter, God doesn’t answer prayers anymore like He used to?

Why is Georgia praying for rain anyway? It isn’t only Georgia; it is also Alabama and Florida. These states share Lake Lanier as reservoir for their water needs. The GBC tells us 3 M Atlantans rely on the lake for drinking water – unfortunately, the Lake has only 3 months of water left at the rate those 3 states are using the precious liquid. So, in truth, Lake Lanier is the Lake of Life of 116M Georgians (9.36M), Alabamans (4.59M) and Floridans (18.08M) (data from Wikipedia, as of 2006). Well, that is an example of the adage: Truth hurts.

According to the GBC, CNN reported on October 17 that ‘the shortage of water in Georgia has created concerns among the citizens of Georgia, Alabama and Florida about how best to manage the regional water supply.’ Sorry, ladies & gentlemen, but that’s the wrong premise – ‘how best to manage’ – because, obviously, you have been remiss in managing the supply in the first place. Because the water is going, going … almost gone, now you’re worried, when you should have minded Lake Lanier decades ago.

The management of Lake Lanier is only 10% about rationing or even rationalizing the water supplied to Alabama, Florida, Georgia; it is 90% about managing the sources of headwaters of the streams that drain into the lake. In short, it’s all about good watershed management.

In the absence of that, what can the Alabamans, Floridans and Georgians do, Catholics and Protestants alike? And that goes for the rest of us humans. I say: Pray for rain – in a roundabout way. By doing any or all of these:

(1) Save on paper. Why? Reason tells us when enough of us save paper, we save a tree; when enough trees have been saved, we save a forest; when we save a forest, we have more rains.

(2) Plant degraded and denuded areas. From more vegetation, more water is transpired and becomes more clouds, and more clouds become rain. (I’m simplifying the water cycle, of course.) Those of you who are in the drylands of Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America, I would recommend planting abandoned or rejected bare areas in small and big scale the crop called sweet sorghum, that which I call ‘The Great Climate Crop’ (americanchronicle.com), because it grows well where most crops grow badly if at all. You can learn more about sweet sorghum as an intelligent source of ethanol from Team ICRISAT captained by William Dar whom I call ‘Global Manager’ (americanchronicle.com), as well as the ‘Al Gore of Science’ (americanchronicle.com).

(3) Save water at home or office or outdoors or at the farm. When you conserve water, the same supply lasts a little longer; since the water comes from the rain, you are essentially conserving rain. Reason tells me it is much more practical conserving rain than praying for rain.

‘I believe in miracles,’ declared Pastor Maurice Watson of Beulahland Bible Church. ‘How about you?’

Elementary, Pastor Watson, elementary. I believe in miracles. I am a miracle; I believe in me. I also believe in making miracles. Rain is the miracle of water evaporating from the surface of Earth, becoming cloud, then falling as teardrops of Heaven.

Now, what have you done with the rain?

If you have not been taking care of the watershed that feeds Lake Lanier, you have driven away the rain.

If you have denuded the watershed, you have denied yourself rain.

The water in Lake Lanier was rain before this time. If you have wasted the water, you have wasted the rain that came for you.

Rain comes from the surface of a lake, river, stream and from plants transpiring; in 16 days, the water in the air is replenished (data from ‘Hydrologic Cycle,’ nwrfc.noaa.gov). (I interpret the data to mean if you ask God for rain right now, it will naturally take Him 16 days to say Yes – or No; remember, God answers prayers, not necessarily to please you.) If you cut down the trees in the forest, you cut down the amount of water transpired; you cut down on the amount of water that becomes rain.

If you do not conserve water in your home, you are wasting rain because that water came from the rain.

So you find that you have to pray for rain. Well, a prayer like that is the last resort. Have we done all we could before praying for rain?

There is also the matter of the nature of the prayer for rain itself. We have to give God a chance to be faithful to His laws. We believe that those who seek, find; those who ask, receive – but is it reasonable to plead with God for rain when in the first place we have made it difficult for the rains to come?

Ray Charles Stedman, in the 1968 series ‘Abraham: The Man Of Faith’ differentiates two kinds of prayer (pbc.org):

The prayer of faith is acting on a previous knowledge of what God wants. It is always founded upon a promise. It begins with a proposal which God makes, or a conviction he gives, or a warning he utters. On the other hand, the prayer of presumption is discovering something we would like to do, and then asking God to bless it.

Stedman was Pastor of Peninsula Bible Church (PBC) in Palo Alto, California; PBC is an ‘independent, non-denominational evangelical congregation’ (crossearch.com). Stedman was ‘one of the great Bible teachers of the 20th century’ (pbc.org); even if I’m Roman Catholic and even if Stedman wasn’t a great Bible teacher, I happen to agree with him. If I may translate, the prayer of faith is to please God; the prayer of presumption is to please you.

That is to say, if I pray for rain, that is to please me. I’m asking for a miracle for God to make a difference for me.

About the Georgian State officials praying on the steps of the Capitol, Ed Buckner, Treasurer of the Atlanta Freethought Society said (Bo Emerson, November 13, ajc.com): ‘This is a ridiculous, illogical exercise even for people who are deeply religious.’

But Ed, believing in God is in the first place a ridiculous, illogical exercise – and I do it all the time. And that’s why it’s called Faith, not Reason.

Emerson also quotes Lucian Lamar Sneed, Chair of the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee and a Methodist, as saying that ‘it certainly doesn’t improve the odds of success if the prayer takes place on the Capitol steps. God’s not impressed by rain dances. He is impressed by the sincerity of the prayer.’

I know of no other prayer more sincere than to have worked for it to make my prayer come true.

In fact, Atlanta, Georgia is now on its 4th driest year ever (David Brody, ‘Drought Plagues the Southeast,’ November 3, cbn.com). Some people never learn.

Governor Sonny Perdue confessed after the praying at the Capitol that the Georgians had not done all they could in matters of conservation (James Salzer & Jim Galloway, November 13, ajc.com). As a matter of fact, local officials had ‘done little to promote or plan for water conservation’ (Whitford, cited):

A million homes in the Atlanta area still have outdated plumbing rather than the low-flow fixtures required of new constructions; worse still, more than half of new suburban developments are still being built with wasteful septic tanks instead of sewers that would allow reprocessing of waste water. Meanwhile, years of under-investment have taken their toll: every day, almost a fifth of Atlanta’s water leaks away without being used.

I’m looking forward to the day Georgian State officials and Protestant ministers will find that they have to do more than just pray at the steps of the Capitol. I pray that they will find reason.

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