I love the idea of planting a garden: all that wonderful greenery, beautiful flowers, and vegetables. So, I give it a whirl from year to year, and every year ends up the same. I looked at my little garden and cringed.
Still, it was early; I told myself, and things could be different this year.
In my “you-can-do-it” pep talk to myself, thoughts of inspiration came to me as I remembered another garden.
A friend decided she was going to plant a garden. Now, she knew nothing about gardening, but that wouldn’t faze her. Like anything else, she would figure it out as she went along. She is an original can-do girl with a plan.
She bought seeds and tools, a new hose, and she was ready.
But, not leaving anything to chance, she stood in the middle of her worked up the ground and prayed: “Lord, I know you were a carpenter, but I know that you also know how to garden, and I could use Your help.” (Her plan; prayer). With that, she started working.
As the summer went along, her garden was producing like crazy. Some friends stopped by one afternoon and asked her how her garden was doing. She led them into the backyard, and it blew them away. It was beautiful! “Molly, it’s amazing.” They told her.
“Everything’s great, but the potatoes, she told them, I don’t understand it.” Her friends asked her, “What do you mean? The plants look incredible!” “But there are no potatoes on them!”
Her friend said, “They are in the ground.” “No, they’re not!” Molly said, grinning. She thought he was teasing. She wasn’t that gullible!
When he realized she didn’t know, he asked, “Do you have a shovel?”
She handed him the shovel, and as he pushed the shovel into the ground, he rolled the soil over. It stunned her. There before her eyes, like magic, was a bumper crop of potatoes. She was shocked. Molly stared at the potatoes and then softly said, “I would never have looked for them there!” Her friends laughed and reassured her there were more under the other potato plants. 
To the experienced gardener, it wouldn’t have been a surprise. But Molly hadn’t planted a garden before, let alone seen a potato plant before. And that’s what makes the story so funny and cute.
One morning as I was doing my devotion and prayer time, and it occurred to me that my prayer life was a garden of sorts.
With the seeds of faith, we lift the needs of others and ourselves to the LORD. Watered with more prayer, we continue to pray until the answer comes.
I browsed through my prayer journal and looking back, and I could see some prayers were really old and still unanswered. Why?
I’d prayed according to God’s word and offered the prayers up in faith- believing. I prayed expectantly. (Matthew 21:22)
I was expecting fruit. A sprout of change, something, I saw the barren ground. Molly was disappointed because she believed there were no potatoes. It seemed so many of my prayers had gone unanswered; I felt discouraged. But were they?
It takes about thirty days to grow lettuce or a radish. It takes ninety to a hundred and twenty days to have a harvest of corn. God grows both, and yet each has its timing. God is at work, no matter how we think, and some fruit we’ll only see at the harvest.
I imagine my prayers like little vines spreading along the ground, over high walls, climbing into dark areas, and climbing the tallest pines. God works across the street and to the far ends of the world through prayer. There is no place which our prayers can’t reach!
We pray; He works; we wait and trust; He continues working, and He brings the harvest!
I believe there is a bumper crop of “hidden” fruit out there. Maybe not as we envisioned it, but as God designed it. Yet, there it is.
Heaven will reveal the real bounty. When we discover the paths our prayer has taken, I think we too will stand amazed and say, I would never have looked there!
The takeaway: Our prayers matter not only for us but for the world. God uses every prayer.
Note: My dear friend Molly has gone to be with the Lord and is in the presence of our Savior. She was a prayer warrior and I believe her prayer- garden has and is continuing to produce today.