prayer Archives - David Mark Brown

As I write this Texas is on fire. A few hours ago a tawny-skinned news anchor covering the fires from a bustling command center facade set up in some Walmart parking lot punctuated his morning report with the adage, “Pray for rain.” That was when it struck me.

It struck me as odd to hear a nancy boy reporter all fancied with make-up echoing the refrain. Why, you ask? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against nancy boys, the wealthy or urbanites (all of which I have been at one point or another. But never all three at once!) It’s just that, well, rain is for the poor, not the wealthy. Rain is for the redneck, not the urbanite.

Read morePray for Rain

I don’t know about you, but from time to time I tend to be a praying man. Those times are usually when I’m bent over a barrel and my cheeks are getting red from life spanking me mercilessly. So you can understand my relief when as I was stumbling through the Gospel according to Matthew the other day I found a reference to a couple of guys who seemed to be a lot like me.

In chapter 20 we meet a couple of blind guys sitting by the road outside of Jericho. Now I image blindness is a sucky thing even today, but I can make an educated guess that it guaranteed a life of begging and scraping just to get by in first century Palestine. So these two guys are maybe sitting by a little fire lit with goat dung and eating crusty bread when a big crowd comes by.

At first they probably hope this means a few extra drachmas in the old guitar case. Then they figure out that the rock star of the roadshow is the guy they’ve been hearing about, Jesus of Nazareth. It’s basically like Little Debbie walking through the middle of fat camp. Right?