On participating in being God’s agent for change through prayer

As the plane descended that Saturday evening in 2003, I watched the forest fires raging over the place on the planet I call home: southern California. Fire after fire lined the eastern corridor to Los Angeles. Once home, I could see the sky lit up and the hills above us on fire. When the winds picked up the next morning, firefighters knocked on our door and told us to pack up to be ready to leave. But the fire receded and didn’t come back, so we went wandering toward the hills to gaze at it more closely. That’s when I did something odd. I shut my eyes and held up my hand toward the direction I wanted the wind to blow so that the fire would bypass our neighborhood and farther move back into the hills. My daughter’s friend quizzed me, “What are you doing?”

With hesitant uncertainty, I offered, “Uh … I’m praying for the wind to shift.”

At the time, I thought that was odd. But now I’d probably say with resolve, “Peace, be still.”

What has changed is that my fledgling ideas about praying for our planet, its forces and our part in this drama have been nurtured by a not-so-ancient saint, Agnes Sanford (1897-1982), author of The Healing Light and Creation Waits. Living in similar circumstances along Los Angeles’ eastern corridor some years earlier, she prayed, “Hear me, wind. … You are to swing around now and blow from the west, bringing in mist and rain from the sea. Come now.” And it did.

Partners not puppets

I knew I’d found a pilgrim ahead of me on this journey when I read about how Sanford (an Episcopal priest’s wife well-known for her teaching about prayer) prayed about Southern California’s other natural disasters, earthquakes. According to Sanford, God’s creation mandate for humans is to be co-laborers—not robots or mere spectators. God could work wonders without anyone’s help, but God likes working with us as a team: “partners, rather than merely puppets.” Part of our labor is caring for the earth as “God’s agents upon this Earth.”

This responsibility as God’s agents goes against contemporary tendencies to either disregard creation or to manipulate it for our own purposes. For Jesus to be the Son of God meant showing self-giving, even self-emptying love; for me to be a child of God means showing self-giving, even self-emptying love instead of selfish exploitation. Can I let go of my manipulative ways, on the one hand, but also my unthinking, indifferent ways (“I’m too busy to recycle”) to be one with God enough to join God in tenderly caring for creation?

Hearing the groaning of the Earth

As God’s agents on earth, we are like estate managers so it behooves us to learn how to be more responsible and vigilant in caring for the Earth. One way we take responsibility is by praying for the Earth. While being partners in reconciliation may sound grand, we can be comforted that Sanford advised people to start small in all the ways of healing prayer. Schooled in these ideas as another round of fires came near our home, I asked God how to start small. The smallest of the nine fires was about 10 miles from me, so I began there. It went out in a day, but then it was a small fire. I’m not sure my prayers made a difference in the fire, but I loved participating in the gentle management of creation.

Then I received an email from a friend living in a distant community surrounded on three sides by fire. Would I pray? I focused on that community, and again it was spared (but a lot of people were praying for that one). I kept all this to myself, following another piece of wisdom Sanford offers: “There is often more power in prayer when we do not tell anyone our objective.”

With new awareness in my eyes and ears, I seem to see and hear the groaning of the Earth (Romans 8:19-23) as we go through a severe drought in southern California. This has caused coyotes and deer and rattlesnakes to appear on our streets and front lawns, desperately looking for water. I pray for unexpected rain to help these creatures. After a few days of praying this way, I found myself slightly annoyed by slow traffic on the freeway because there was unexpected rain. So I thanked God for the prayed-for but unexpected rain that inconvenienced me but helped the Earth and its creatures.

Some people prefer not to pray about things because if things don’t come out perfectly it will look like God has failed. We don’t pray in order to protect God’s reputation (as if God needs me to do this). People even ask, Where is God? But when homes and even lives are destroyed, I am still God’s agent. God is there because I’m there. God is a helper in these situations and invites my human mind and body to join by helping too, donating time and money.

I’m helped by Sanford’s counsel that the prayer of faith is one of expectancy. When facing a natural disaster or encountering intimidating creatures of the Earth, we tend to be afraid or worry or even become numb. But she insists these responses contradict the reality of our expectant faith: “The prayer that we see in our minds [fear, worry, numbness] takes precedence over the prayer [of faith] and renders it of no avail.” For me this means believing that God’s love and light in the universe can for this moment be focused on this creature or natural force in front of me. It’s at least being willing to ask. Besides, once we’ve participated in being God’s agent a few times, we love being a part of what God is doing and would never sit on the sidelines again.

With Earth prayers, for example, she asked God if she might pray that a certain brewing calamity be averted, but “this prayer was too great for me. ‘May I pray for it to be minimized?’ I asked, and quite distinctly I heard, ‘Yes.’ ” So she prayed for three days, and the ensuing catastrophe was much less than expected.