Today is the 58th consecutive National Day of Prayer observed in our country.
First observed by our founding President George Washington and later by other presidents like Abraham Lincoln who called the nation to prayer in a time of crisis, this tradition is one of great significance.
Today as I was reflecting in route to join with others in our community to offer my prayers to God I was made deeply conscious of the privilege we have as Americans to pray. And two significant thoughts stood out to me concerning America and prayer:
1. I was reminded that there are many places in the world today where people are brutally attacked by their governments because they gather to pray.
I was reminded of the country of my birth, Eritrea, a small impoverished country in NE Africa, where today (and for several years now) Christians who attempt to gather with others to pray are routinely rounded up by military police and hauled away to prison camps where they can be held for months in steel shipping containers with as many as 60 persons per container and allowed out for only a few minutes a day to use the toilet. These containers are in themselves torture chambers as they absorb and transmit the baking heat of the desert sun.
WHY are people suffering like this?
Because they live in totalitarian states that try to remove God from society by force!
Because of a deeply felt need to pray that compels them to risk everything to pray….
This thought should stimulate every free man and society to value and actively work to keep and enable the right and privilege to pray.
2. While disappointed that President Obama did not use this opportunity to encourage Americans to seek God in public prayer, I commend him for his statements concerning setting aside time for daily private prayer.
The fact is that if people don’t seek relationship with God on a daily basis in private prayer, all the public prayer gatherings in the world will have little effect in getting God’s attention or changing the conditions of our world, our nation, our community, our family, or our soul.
On the contrary, if we commit ourselves to a relationship with God that causes us to pray daily and have a ‘spirit of prayerful fellowship’ with God that is ‘without ceasing’, our times of public prayer will be times when God reveals Himself in power!
If we don’t make such a commitment to private prayer and exercise it, I fear that America may not be long in following countries like Eritrea. We are even now only a few decisions away from loosing many freedoms we have long taken for granted.
May God help us to pray!
