It's Time to Pray!

We have a collection of old Ideals books I inherited from my Personeus grandparents. Every fall, my husband gets them off the shelf to browse through them. Full of colorful pictures, poems, and short stories, they bring to our remembrance days or yore. We especially enjoy the fall scenes.

In our 1956 Old Fashioned Issue of Ideals, I came across a letter that is so apropos it could have been written about America today:

We have been the recipients of the 

choicest bounties of Heaven; 

we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power

 as no other nation has 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.
                                  --Abraham Lincoln

My heart breaks when I hear the attacks on our Judeo-Christian heritage. I'm reminded of a song I used to sing as a teenager, "It's time to Pray." 

It's time to pray to the God who watches o'er us;

It's time to seek His help without delay;

The world is dark for the clouds of war still threaten;

It's time for all America to pray.

If we would keep the flag of freedom flying,

Secure the peace for which we all are crying,

It's time to pray--our sin and wrong confessing,

It's time for all America to pray!

It's up to us as people of God!

If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14, NKJV).


Update on my health: I've been kept busy with doctors' appointments and all kinds of test trying to get to the cause of my uncontrolled blood pressure. Continuing to try new medications to find ones that help. More tests scheduled. But I continue to look to the Lord, my Healer. Appreciate your continued prayers for me. Thank you!