PRAYER Rx --- February 12
Dear Lord, today, as we remember President Lincoln's birthday, help us to re-read his Proclamation of 1863, given to the nation in trying times, and apply his wisdom to our present situation. President Lincoln said: "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 vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. ... We have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace; too proud to pray to the God who made us."* ... We might add to Lincoln's last sentence: "... and egotistical enough to think that we have outgrown Him!" ... Oh Lord, bring us to our senses, lest we turn away from You, and by so doing bring on our nation's downfall.
In the name of Jesus we pray.
Amen.
* From: "CELEBRATIONS OF A NATION -- Early American Holidays"
Author: Lucille Johnston