Written by Matthew Slama
Date: 5/3/2018

As today is the National Day of Prayer, I reminded myself of the words of our great president, Abraham Lincoln, when he appointed a National Day of Fasting. This came about when our country had the most strife and was torn apart through civil war.

"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."

Was it not God, working though this great leader that brought our country together? How much more can we, together as leaders in our communities, be influencers for good and unification, if we pursue Him?