Preparing for National Day of Prayer

**REVISED 2:41pm 5/6/09...SEE BELOW**

Tomorrow is the National Day of Prayer. This tradition was established by our government in the early 1950s, but history shows similar instances were occuring all the way back to the time of our Founding Fathers. I had completely forgotten that tomorrow was the National Day of Prayer and I found it very ironic when I heard that this morning because just yesterday God laid it on my heart to do a topic study on persistent prayer and faith and I was planning on sharing that tomorrow anyways.

On my radio this morning, I heard that for the first time in 9 years the National Day of Prayer was not going to be publicly celebrated in the White House beyond a simple proclamation. No attendance at a prayer meeting or meeting with religious leaders. I did a little research on this and found this article from the Chicago Tribune.

After reading it, here are my thoughts:

It's sad to me how much people misconstrue the meaning of "separation of church and state" as originally intended by our forefathers. Their vision was not that religion would play no role in government, but rather that government would not dictate the religion to which people had to adhere.

Personally, Obama riding the fence on this issue like he does on so many others - trying to please both conservative Christians and liberals - gets him nowhere. I'd rather have a president who at least has a backbone and takes a strong stand for something even if I highly disagree with it. How does that verse go about being lukewarm?

Now more than ever our nation needs to be a nation committed to God and prayer. I wish that President Obama, who claims to be a believer, would have taken a stand that's not only in-line with his claimed beliefs, but that honors the tradition dating back to the late 1700s.

**REVISION: After typing this, I did some more research and was even more disheartened, because Obama had no problem having an event posted on his campaign website declaring a National Day of Prayer that voters would choose to vote for change. Check that out here.