Algorithm of prayer

An excerpt from the book "Through painted deserts" by Donald Miller

I look down at my miserable friend. For a second, I think I'm the crazy one. There is no reason for me to be fooling around. We have no water, so we need a ride. And there have been no cars for the better part of an hour, like Paul said. The sun is in midsky, so we've got a half day of sunlight to get us more and more thirsty. And how do we fix this thing? We don't have money for a transmission and there's no telling  what is eaten up under the van. It is basically useless. We will probably have to hitch the rest of the way. Neither of us is going to call home for help. I know that without asking.

Paul looks up and meets my eye. "Do you want to pray?"
"Whatever," I tell him, not really wanting to pray.

Paul lowers his head like a little kid in Sunday school and rests his chin on his knee. He closes his eyes and speaks fairly loudly. His words are soft and low: "God, we are stuck in the desert and the van doesn't work. We don't know what to do. We don't know whether to leave it or what to do. I guess we need a ride or something."

I'm looking out over the hills watching some heat rise off the dunes in the distance.

"We need a mechanic, God. That's what we need. If You could send us someone to get us on our way, to help us with this transmission, that would be great." Paul stops praying. He stands up and starts walking out into the desert.

"Paul!"

He turns toward me with a frustrated look. "Yeah?"

"Look." I point over the horizon. He can't see it yet, but there is a car coming.

"Is it a car?"

"Yes."

He walks quickly to the other side of the road and stands gazing. He's half in the road.

"Be careful," I tell him. He steps back onto the shoulder.

Over the hill comes a station wagon. Brown in color, it matches the landscape. The wagon slows a little as it nears, but speeds up again as the driver realizes we are not a wreck or anything worth looking at. He drives by at about thirty to forty miles per hour and hardly looks our way. There's a man at the wheel, and a woman in the passenger's seat with a few kids int he back. As he passes, the children turn to look at us through the back window. His brake lights flash and then come on solid.

"He's stopping," Paul says.

I slide down the windshield and catch the bumper with my boot. The reverse lights on the wagon come on and the man backs up onto the shoulder. Dust kicks out on either side as the station wagon weaves backward. It's a brown wagon with brown wood-panel trim. A real gas-guzzler from the early eighties.

He is a bearded man with a red baseball cap. His beard is untrimmed and his wife looks troubled that he decided to stop. The children are quiet in the backseat. One looks over at me without any expression, then turns back to face forward. the other two do not look. they do not even look at Paul, who has begun a conversation with the man. Paul steps away from the door as the man reaches through the open window to pull the outside handle. A closer look at the car reveals it ti be quite the jalopy. A rope fastens the hood to the bumper and another of the same sort fastens a suitcase to the roof.

The man steps out of his car and pulls up his sagging pants. Running his hand across the front of his shirt, he tucks it in. He has a tattoo on his forearm of a woman without clothes. She probably had a good figure at one time, but she looks faded, oblong, and tired of being attached to him. The man is talking to Paul about the van. He's asking what Paul thinks is wrong with it. Paul tells him it's the transmission and the bearded man just shakes his head and looks out in the desert and shakes his head again.

"Sounds really bad," he says. "Well, you boys are in luck. Probably haven't seen many cars out here, have you?"

Paul confirms that we haven't.

"Not many people get out this way. You could have been here for hours if it weren't for me stopping to help. Not a lot of people would have stopped, you know."

"Thanks," Paul says.

"Don't mention it." The man removes his cap and runs his hand across his thick hair and puts his cap back on. "I'm  a mechanic," he says,

"You are?" I mean, huh, is that right?" Paul leans against the van and looks away.

"Can you help us?" I ask, trying to get the man to get to the point and ask for money, which is probably the only reason he stopped int he first place.

"Well, I've got business in Arizona, and it really does set me back to stop here. I've got an appointment and all, you know."

"I see," I say. "Well, you better get going, then. We wouldn't want you to miss your appointment." Paul looks over at me with a cold look, telling me with his eyes to keep quiet.

"Well, now, wouldn't want to leave you boys stranded. Like I said, there's nobody going to stop for you out here. You were lucky I stopped. Certainly didn't have to."

"Like I said before, we don't want to keep you. We'll figure something out. You can go on."

"I can take a look at it real quick, if you want. I normally don't do this for a free, but I can help you out, I guess." The bearded man stands there with his hands in his pockets and rocks back and forth on his heels.

Paul looks at me as if to question whether we offer him money. If we do, I think to myself, we will really be running short of cash. Simply can't do it. I don't even think the thing can be fixed anyway. The last thing I want to do is give the man a twenty dollars to tell us there is nothing he can do and then tell us he can't give us a ride because his wagon is full. So I tell him we don't have money. I clarify and tell him we can't spare any money and then I ask him if he is still willing to look at it. Feeling guilty, he kneels down, lies on his back, and slides under the van. I shake my head and Paul gives me a little punch. We both get down on our backs and slide under the van with the man. Plenty of room under this piece of garbage, that's for sure.

.......

Isn't it amazing that God really did answer Paul the way he prayed for help....that's how we ought to pray, no syntax, no subject and verb agreement...just be straight with God and if it's His will we'll get exactly what we prayed for. AMEN!