Prayer in a Wheat Field

One spring morning when I was about eight years old, my father asked me and my five brothers to go with him in the pickup truck to one of his wheat fields near Ashton, Idaho. After we arrived at the field, he explained to us that each year in the springtime he would go to the fields and kneel down in the green wheat to pray to Heavenly Father.

We walked about a hundred feet into the green field, then removed our hats and knelt down together. My father offered a beautiful prayer. He prayed for rain and protection from the elements. He asked that the farm would yield a bounteous harvest. And he consecrated the harvest to the Lord for the raising of his family and the building up of the kingdom of God.

The harvest that year was good, and we knew that the Lord’s hand had blessed the crops as in years past.

Several years later, after four more children had come into our family, my parents decided they must leave the farm in order to provide for such a large family. Both Dad and Mom went back to the university to become schoolteachers. Our family moved to the nearby town of St. Anthony, Idaho, where my parents’ service in the Church and work in the school district blessed the community.

From my vantage point, the bounteous harvest of my parents’ life has been not of wheat but of their children, including spouses and grandchildren. As I look back on the lessons learned and blessings received from that experience with my father in the wheat field that spring morning, I recognize the power of prayer and of a worthy father who dedicated all he owned to his family and the Lord.