He liked to pray in the woods. We’re talking early, like 4:00AM early. That’s when God revealed divine secrets to him. The man often remarked that you learn more by walking in the woods and listening carefully than what you read in books.
One morning George Washington Carver (1864-1943) asked God why he made the peanut. He had peanuts on his mind since he had been laboring as a botanist on the problem of cotton-depleted farmland in the South. The boll weevil was devastating cotton yields and farmers were desperate to plant alternative crops. George described what God said to him one morning about the peanut, “Separate the peanut into water, fats, oils, gums, resin, sugars, starches and amino acids. Then recombine them using my three laws of compatibility, temperature and pressure. Then you will know why I made the peanut.” God has never spoken quite this way to me before but neither have I walked in the woods at four in the morning to find out.
George set to work in his laboratory and discovered three hundred uses for the peanut. He helped Henry Ford develop a rubber substitute using, what else, the peanut. His research into crop rotation revitalized farming. George believed he was on a God-given mission to help rural farmers, Black and White. He must have been on a mission form God to endure such intense racial prejudice. George spoke of the natural world as God’s “unlimited broadcasting station.” God is speaking in nature all the time. “What we have to do,” he said, “is tune in.” George’s comfortable manner of praying reminds us that prayer is, after all, talking with God: