And When You Pray...

Snow covers Odyssey, and Donna Barclay finds her brother Jimmy sitting in the freezing garage doing absolutely nothing. He is waiting, he explains, for a bicycle. The night before he prayed hard that God would give him one, and since it has not arrived yet, he figures the sensible thing to do is ask again. His friend Brad prayed for a bike and got one a couple of days later, so Jimmy and Brad have been praying together for what Jimmy calls double power. He is sure the Bible promises that anyone with faith the size of a mustard jar can move whole mountains. Donna corrects him - it is a mustard seed - and tells him prayer simply does not work that way. When he asks why not, the only answer she can come up with is that it just doesn't. Their mother wants the sidewalk shoveled before Grandpa arrives, so Donna suggests Jimmy pray about the mountains of snow but bring a shovel just in case.

The argument sticks with Donna, because underneath the teasing she is genuinely confused. Over hot chocolate at Whit's End, she asks Connie how she prays. Connie says she talks to God the way she talks to her own father, only better, since God is always available and her dad is in California behind an answering machine. When Connie tells her to simply thank God and ask him for what she needs, Donna hesitates. Asking her dad for her allowance is hard enough. Asking God for things feels like too much - and the whole idea seems far too easy.

That evening Grandpa Barclay says grace over dinner in grand, old-fashioned language full of thees and thous, and Jimmy quietly decides that fancy words must be the missing ingredient. Then Grandpa announces he found something in the basement last week that he thought Jimmy might like: George's old bicycle from when he was a boy, out in the trunk and needing a little fixing up. Jimmy is triumphant. Donna knocks over her water glass in astonishment. Grandpa apologizes that he only had the one bike, and Jimmy crows that all a person needs is a mustard jar.

Alone in her room, Donna looks up Mark 11:24 and reads that whatever a person prays for and believes they have received will be granted. That sounds simple enough, so she decides to test it with something small and useful: rain on Monday, so gym class will be cancelled. Rain rather than snow, since her school sometimes sends students outside anyway. Her first attempt sounds too demanding, her second collapses into a tangle of invented thees and thous that means nothing at all, and her third sounds plain rude. Out of ideas and out of words, she finally falls back on the bedtime prayer she learned as a small child.

Monday morning is sunny and warm, the snow nearly melted, and Donna comes to breakfast in a raincoat and galoshes. Her mother points out that there is not a single cloud in the sky. Donna insists the clouds will show up before gym class and hurries off to school. They do not. Mrs. Butchfield, her gym teacher, wants to know why she is dressed in a raincoat and rubber booties instead of gym clothes, and Donna admits she prayed for rain, explaining about Jimmy and the bicycle and the verse she read. Mrs. Butchfield offers her five seconds. She counts them out. The sky stays clear. Donna runs laps, gets nicknamed Little Miss Elijah in front of the whole class, and walks away certain that God does not answer prayers at all.

Back at Whit's End, Connie tells her that Whit is waiting upstairs in the Bible Room and has already straightened Connie out about a few of her own mistakes concerning prayer. Donna is not sure she wants to hear it, but Jimmy talks her into going. They find Whit tightening bolts on a strange contraption. It is going to be a vending machine, he says, and not for sodas and candy bars. For prayers. Choose your prayer, push a button, and the answer drops out at the bottom. He has buttons for money, good grades on tests nobody studied for, the newest toys, popularity - and he asks the children what else he should add. Donna can think of plenty, then realizes the whole thing is a joke.

It is a joke, Whit agrees, and he intends to finish building it anyway, because it makes a point. People often treat God like a giant vending machine that will hand over whatever they want if they push the right buttons, insert enough coins, or shake and kick it hard enough. God is not like that. Prayer, Whit explains, is not talking to God but talking with God - a conversation, and nobody has conversations with vending machines. What matters is not how the words are arranged but what is actually in them. God wants to hear what a person is thinking and feeling. There is room in prayer to confess, to ask for help for other people, and yes, to ask for things for oneself.

That last part is exactly where Donna is stuck: she asked, and nothing happened. Whit tells her there is a simple reason, and the reason is love. God is a father who loves his children, and no good parent gives a child everything the child wants, because parents are meant to give what is genuinely good. Donna should believe that God gives every prayer his loving attention - but that answer is not always yes. Sometimes it is no, and sometimes it is wait. The answer will come, and it will come at the time that is right.

Donna is only half convinced. It is easy for Jimmy to be cheerful, she grumbles, since he got his bike while she still had to go to gym class. Whit asks how exactly she expected God to get her out of gym in the first place - and thunder rolls over Odyssey. Whit remarks that he cannot recall the last time there was a thunderstorm in winter. Donna goes very quiet, wondering.