Community members coming together ... to Pray for Rain

The breeze was cool, almost constant. You could hear the water from the waterfall and the waterspout as well as the quacking of the ducks in the background. The community members just kept coming. They were gathering together to pray for rain. Desperately needed rain.

Many individuals and churches have been praying for rain for quite some time. The San Saba Ministerial Alliance arranged this Community Prayer Gathering because of our dire need for rain.

The Prayer Gathering was held 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, August 9th, at the beautiful Mill Pond Park Gazebo.

When the meeting started, there were about 80 in attendance. Folks just kept coming. There were over 90 who took time out of their day to come together to ask our Creator to bless our land with much needed rain.

The meeting was opened by Tom Brand, Pastor of The Father’s House. He read 2 Chronicles 7:14 which reads: if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. He also read a Scripture about faith from the New Testament, James 5:16-17 which reads: Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Elijah later prayed for rain, and it rained.

Pastor Tom asked for volunteers to come to the microphone and pray. Some asked for mercy in their prayers. Some quoted Scripture in their prayers. Some pled with their Heavenly Father for rain in their prayers. Some asked for forgiveness in their prayers. Some thanked God for the blessings He so richly gives every day. Some thanked God for the rain that will eventually come. Some thanked God for the volunteers fighting the wildfires that are so rampant and asked for protection for our First Responders. One person prayed in Spanish and then translated their prayer in English.

At the end of every prayer, you could hear the crowd say in unison, “Amen!”

Pastor Tom then asked everyone, right where they were, to pray to God, out loud if they wished, or in their heart. It was a choir of prayers going up before the God of heaven. After a few moments, he voiced a prayer to God to open up the heavens and send the healing rains.

To conclude the meeting, Rodney Payton, Worship Pastor at San Saba’s First Baptist Church, led everyone in the first and last verses of Amazing Grace.

• Amazing grace how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now I'm found Was blind but now I see

• When we've been here ten thousand years Bright, shining as the sun We've no less days to sing God's praise Than when we first begun

Just a note of interest and something to think about...the very next day, Brown County received some rain.