By Paul Derengowski
Today, May 5, 2016 has been designated as The National Day of Prayer in the United States. It was officially designated as such by Congress back in 1952 and was intended to encourage Americans to “turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.”
It is actually a law to be enforced by U.S. Law code to the chagrin of every God-hating atheist that dots the land.
That said, with so many churches weakly struggling along to survive, mainly because of a departure from biblical teaching, one has to wonder, just who or what are most Americans praying to on this day, if they are praying at all?
Most Americans view of God starts with themselves, as they mold and make God in their own image, which means the land is filled with idols and idolaters.
Those idols are manifested in fawning over entertainers, professional athletes, and politicians, as if those “gods” really care about anything other than themselves.
What ought to be a day of humble contemplation and the asking of forgiveness will mostly turn out to be an arrogant expectation from either God or the idol of choice to bless America with more riches, as if to say we are such worthy human beings amid all the waste and corruption.
If one is privy enough to spend any time tonight at ballparks all around America, during the seventh inning stretch, baseball fans will be encouraged to rise and sing God Bless America.
It is actually a prayer anthem with meaningful lyrical content or something that is desperately missing in much of contemporary religious and secular music.
However, not a word will be said to express the reason why God should bless America. It is merely assumed as if, once again, to say we deserve the very thing we turn a blind eye to in real life.
On The National Day of Prayer website, an article is posted under the name of Barak Obama in reference to this day is full of blather and lacking substance.
It is a touchy-feely piece about prayer’s importance, a couple of allusions to God, and even cites “our Lord” for good measure.
Yet, given Obama’s track record of denying who God is, as he repeatedly collaborates with the enemies of America to destroy her, what originally would have been thought of as a genuine appeal for divine intervention, grace, and mercy turns out to be as big of a mockery of the day and prayer as his whole effort to represent the Presidential Office the past eight years.
Real prayer is real communication with God and does not require a specially designated day to engage in it.
That is, unless the event is more about show, pomp and circumstance, and intentionally ignoring who God is and what He has revealed in Scripture.
Then what we have is another hollow holy day, as we adore the idols of our creation and await God’s judgment for failing to repent of our religious hypocrisy.
Truth!