A Specific Prayer for Rain

Reprinted in the Daily Oklahoman on July 29, 1998.

"From Emporia, Kansas, William Allen White had a window on the world. As editor, publisher and owner of the Emporia Gazette during the late 19th and 20th centuries, White had friends in high places–Theodore Roosevelt among them. But when it came to the weather, White went to the top.

White's urgent appeal for rain, written in 1935 when a drought gripped Kansas, as in Oklahoma today. White appealed to the Lord. This has had results before in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Florida.

White has had many different reasons for success, but perhaps nothing he wrote is more appreciated by farmers and those who depend upon them than his appeal for rain.

White wrote:

"Oh, Lord, in thy mercy grant us rain and by that we don't mean a shower. We want to go out and watch the lightning rip across the southwestern sky in hot blue forks as the fat clouds roll in on us. We want to hurry home to close the house with the first fat drops the size of marbles, on a suddenly rising wind, chasing us and plunking on the car hood. We want to scramble all over the house, just as the first sheets descend, frantically slamming down the windows.

O Lord of hosts, we want to look out the windows and watch the regiments of close-packed raindrops march diagonally down. We want to hear the gurgle of gutters under the eaves, and then the sputter of the down spout–let it come down so hard, let the drops dance so high that the streets and sidewalks seem covered with a 6-inch fog of spatter-drops. Then let it just keep up for a while, and then begin to taper off, and then turn right around and get worse, swishing, pounding, splattering, pouring, drenching, the thunder coming–crackity–BAM—and the lightning flashing so fast and furious you can't tell which flash goes with which peal of thunder, and then, O Jealous God, repeat the whole act about three times, and in the middle of the second time we will climb the attic stairs and put the wash pan under the tiny leak in the roof which usually you can't even notice. And after a couple of hours, kind of taper it down. O Lord, to a good steady rain–not a drizzle, but a businesslike one that keeps up until just about dawn and than spits a few drops occasionally during the morning from a gray sky.

"We can't live much longer on promises, so in Thine own way and in Thine own time, make up Thy mind, O Lord, and we will bow before Thy judgment, and praise Thine everlasting name. Amen."