Today, I share with you a call to prayer for our nation, the United States of America. Can you guess how long ago it was written? The language will give away the age a bit, but you will have to admit that the message sounds like it could have been written yesterday:
“The truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history is that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”
What was your guess?
The answer: One hundred and fifty years ago.
By President Abraham Lincoln.
He signed this proclamation to appoint April 30th, 1863 (a Thursday) as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer. The proclamation also stated:
“I do hereby request all the people to abstain on that day from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite at their several places of public worship and their respective homes in keeping the day holy to the Lord…. All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope…that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”
It is amazing to read this proclamation 150 years after it was written and realize that we find ourselves in a similar place now. We have not been faithful to repent as a nation. We, the Christians in the nation, have failed to be prayerful for our nation. Our greatest act of service for our country is to fast and pray for it with humble hearts seeking that God would turn our nation’s hearts back to Him. One of our early presidents realized the important need for us to do so. I pray that we will realize our need to join together 151 years later and answer this clear call to serve our nation through prayer.
(These words are from Proclamation 97 – Appointing a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer – March 30, 1863 – Abraham Lincoln)