a great reminder : prayer

If you didn't grow up around mangoes like the entire 11 million population of Haiti, you might not know.

You might think, when you see trees full of them, branches heavy and swaying, that the large, green fruit is surely the right size for picking! But with mangoes--some kinds small as apricots, some large as dinner plates--size has nothing to do with their ripeness.

Long after they are full and green, they are still hard as rocks, hanging by a long thread of a stem. If you pick them now, force one off impatiently, it will remain hard and white and never soften...only sit on your table to shrivel and rot.

You have to leave them and let the invisible do it's work...let the sun warm their skin, let the drip...drip..drip of sap seep through those narrow stems and slowly soften and ripen the fruit.

When they are sweet and warm and golden and juicy on the inside, they fall...and it is from the ground, not the trees, that you gather mangoes.

All night long you here them thump and thwack, and with the earliest rays go the men, women and children with baskets and bags and five-gallon buckets. Get them before the goats and chickens do, huge baskets of fruit every day, more than everyone can eat, more than you can sell!

Those days, mango season, even the most serious business man quickly smudges off traces of orange from his chin, toothless babies and grannies patiently suck every fiber from the huge flat pits, students stash a few unflawed fruits among their notebooks, and everyone who goes to visit takes a few mangoes as a gift, even if every host already has a yard full of them.

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There are many who wonder what to do for Haiti in this hard, hard time. How do you pray for so many baskets full of problems?

Does prayer even matter? Surely you have prayed many times before! What does prayer even DO?

Does prayer make it always mango season and feed the hungry? Does prayer clear the roads, calm the storms, supply the fuel so sought after, does prayer force peace down the throats of chaos and smudge out all traces of corruption and evil?

Not always.

But prayer DOES always drip...drip...drip grace.

The prayers of His people, lifted from well-worn knees and faithful hands, slowly and surely deliver grace to hard hearts, trickles warmth into stone-cold situations, seeps His grace upon grace through narrow stems and slowly softens and ripens.

God uses our prayers—our steady, invisible prayers—to drip grace into the lives of those we love, into the hearts of those we pray for, into the situations that look from the outside like they will never bear fruit, will NEVER be sweet.

It is not TIME that sweetens stony mangoes into delectable, nutritious fruit. It is that deep water, coming up from many roots, climbing strong trunks and spreading through a thousand stems, pouring slowly into each fruit, turning it golden!

Do not simply wait for your brother or aunt or co-worker to finally soften to Jesus...do not wait for your difficult community or your strained marriage to change. Do not wait for something to shift in Haiti, do not wait idly by and hope that that hard prayer request sitting on the counter will somehow sweeten!

It is not by patience, but by PRAYER His grace pours out...the deep-rooted prayers of many, lifted up with strong and faithful hands day-in-and-day-out that CHANGES the hearts of men, that softens the broken situations, that takes what was hard and usless and makes it sweet and GOOD.

Pray on for our dear Haiti, ushering grace into the hearts and lives and situations of many.

Pray for that which is bitter to miraculously turn sweet, and bring your baskets.

As we wait and watch and pray...it is with hope.