Good Thursday morning! Today is the National Day of Prayer. Hey, I have one thing we can all stop worrying about: Don't worry about who else is stopping to pray today. Don't worry about who is not praying today. Leave the President out of the discussion; don't worry about the members of Congress or the Supreme Court; leave alone which celebrity is speaking without a script; and let the rock stars be rock stars. Instead, worry only about praying with Jesus on your own or with a small group of family or friends. The National Day of Prayer is for each of us. We can pray for our nation without fear. Lately that seems almost contradictory. We can pray together while closing the door on our individual prayer closets if we wish. God is not limited by time and space as we are.
Our nation has designated one day as a national prayer day, but God is not reserved for today. Our Lord is not especially listening on this one day over all others. However, we can go to prayer alone if we wish and know that all over the country people much like you and me are praying too. There is certainly something to be said for praying for our nation together on at least one day this year. We can pray for how our nation acts toward other nations. We can pray for national policies that hurt our country. That one is likely to send up a bunch of contradictory requests to God, but praise God for his wisdom in answering. That brings up another one: we can pray to God that our leaders would listen to His wisdom in their decision making. We can pray for God's wisdom in electing our representatives to government. We are responsible as a people for who goes to Washington. Do they have to be Democrats or Republicans? We can even pray that God's will is done in our nation.
As we are a nation of individuals with more freedoms than most nations, we can also pray that we have wisdom of our own. The Supreme Court might say that the Constitution does not forbid abortion, that is their job, but that does not mean that anyone has to choose to kill an unborn baby. We can pray that the people of this nation will listen to God's wisdom and do His will. We can pray that all of us will behave less selfishly, both in our jobs and in our lives at home. We, that's you and me, certainly have much to pray for today! And after... or maybe before all of that we can start our prayers of thanksgiving. We have even more to be grateful for in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The good thing about a National Day of Prayer is that it reminds all of us to take some time on at least this one day to pray to our God. After that we can work on reminding all of us that every day is a day of prayer.
Bucky
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