In November, after all the harvest was done on the farm and as much Fall tillage had been completed as was appropriate, my brother, Larry, his son, Kenny, and Dad spent a few days digging up and working on field drain tiles. I had the good fortune to be in the area on one of the days they were working on the deep lines, 7 or 8 feet deep. They had excavated the soil with a backhoe and were replacing T-joints, which is usually a job guaranteed to get a person muddy and wet, but not this year. Between early June and September 5, the area our farm is in received one inch of rain. It was dry. The crops did pretty fair, all things considered, and we are grateful for what we received, yet our concern was not so much for what had happened in 2007, but for what was going to happen in 2008. The hole they had dug to work on the T-joint was dry, dry at 7 to 8 feet of depth. Dry. Crops can root down deeply, but as we stood there looking at dry soil 8 feet deep, our worry for next year was, 'Where will the subsoil moisture come from to feed the next crop?' Farmers prayers are, often, a type of subsoil prayer: deep and far-reaching.
Today, the temperature is in the mid-40's and the snow and ice received in the last days is slowly melting, the water patiently seeping into the soil. In a way that rain cannot hope to achieve, snow and ice melt seeps into the soil and trickles down giving life in the depths of the earth, offering hope for the coming days with an intentionality that only a farmer or gardener can truly appreciate. The very weather which has frustrated the building industry in the last few weeks, the very weather which allowed the building industry to boom in our area last Summer, is also the weather which acts in deliberate fashion on behalf of those who feed the world. It is not always what is on the surface which will make the greatest difference, sometimes it is precisely what we cannot observe that will, in fact, save our very lives. Subsoil prayers are powerful, meaningful prayers on the lips of those who understand the totality of life's cycle. The farmer working the surface of the field prays for the entire earth, understanding that what lies beneath is what energizes the life at the surface.
There are 19 days till Easter. Before you start getting all giddy about what is to happen on the surface at Easter, take time to stand still at Gethsemane and pray a subsoil prayer with the farmers of the world. Who knows what God will do to meet the needs of God's people when they pray? Don't let your life dry out for lack of prayer for what happens beyond what you can perceive.
Your servant in Christ,
Pastor Don
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