Prayer Is a Cornerstone of Our Nation

I was privileged yesterday to take part, along with at least 36 fellow Members of Congress, in a Press Conference calling America to prayer.  In doing so, we acknowledged that the core foundation and dream of America are those self-evident truths: that all men are created equal, loved by the Creator who made us in His image and endowed us with those unalienable rights.  It is incumbent upon us, therefore, to remember to faithfully acknowledge and honor Him, seeking His wisdom, grace, and guidance — things all the more vital to us who have been given the tremendous honor of governing the nation our Founders envisioned as a City upon a Hill.

The power of prayer and its influence in the founding of our nation cannot be overstated.  Prayer has been the refuge of rich and the poor; the lonely and the afflicted; the soldier in war and a grateful nation in peace.  It was prayer that sustained George Washington through the darkest hours in the monumental struggle for America’s independence; it was prayer that drove Abraham Lincoln, as he said, to his knees, sustaining him in perhaps the greatest struggle for human freedom that any man has ever faced.  As Reagan said, a nation that forgets that it is a nation under God “will be a nation gone under.”  Let us therefore remember that if we continue to lift our faces to the Giver of Liberty, to humble ourselves and to seek His favor and grace, He will keep His guiding hand upon us, and grant us those “blessings of Liberty” that encompass the very heart and spirit of America.