61st NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER

The National Day of Prayer has great significance for us as a nation. It enables us to recall and to teach the way in which our founding fathers sought the wisdom of God when faced with critical decisions. It stands as a call to us to humbly come before God, seeking His guidance for our leaders and His grace upon us as a people. The unanimous passage of the bill establishing the National Day of prayer as an annual event, signifies that prayer is as important to our nation today as it was in the beginning.
In 1775, when the Continental Congress asked the colonies to pray for wisdom in forming a nation,the call to prayer has continued through history,including President Lincoln's proclamation of a day of "humiliation,fasting, and prayer" in 1863. In 1952, a joint resolution by Congress, signed by President Truman, declared an annual, national day of prayer. In 1988, the law was amended and signed by President Reagan, permanently setting the day as the first Thursday of every May.  Each year, the president signs a proclamation, encouraging all Americans to pray on this day. Last year,all 50 state governors plus the governors of several US territories signed similar proclamations.

Market day for me on this Thursday was a fairly busy one. After market I ran my regular errands and did some grocery and baking supply shopping on the way home.
I had an Avon monthly meeting this evening but decided I wouldn't go. No real reason other than laziness!

On this day of prayer I feel like I need a lot of prayer after looking at the local news paper's website this morning between market customers and finding a picture of the man who caused me so much grief and ultimately caused me to stop my work caring for our church.
His "Hollier than thou" attitude along with his attitude that what he was doing had to be so much more important than the damage he was doing to the church and the disrespectful "all about me and the band he was setting up for", attitude sickened me. After confering with the Pastor(who offered no resolution) and wrestling for months with the burning burden that something was not right I choose to step away from my job in order to avoid anymore conflicts. My sleepless nights fretting over this were fewer,even though every once and a while the same old sickening feeling would grip me as this ordeal went through my mind once again. 
In fact just last night the uneasy gnawing feeling came back as I finally drifted off to sleep.
When I saw the headlines that a local man had been charged with 2 counts of statutory rape I thought "oh no who now?"   As I clicked on the story and the man's photo came up, at first I didn't recognize him. But when I looked at the name ,I caught my breath !!!!
I felt like dropping to my knees right there and then and begging God's forgiveness for failing Him.
He put this burden on me  and I knew that something wasn't right with these goings on and I choose the easy way out.  I stepped away from it ,thinking if I only go to church on Sunday and don't look around at the holes in the walls and floors and don't take notice of the disrespect shown to our congregation then I could sleep soundly at night and free my mind of this burden.
I even wondered if maybe the devil was sneaking these evil thoughts into my mind encouraging me to stir up trouble to divide our church.
After reading what he had done I really did feel sick, to think of an innocent young girl who was raped by this awful man not once but twice is unbelievable.  I can shut my eyes and hear this man professing his undying love for God in making excuses for his activities. All I can do is wonder what other victims there may be.
As I wrestled again with what I could have done I haven't came up with a sufficient answer. With our Pastor and several of the Deacons in support of these people,  I'm not sure that there would have been anything I could have done to change their minds. My only hope, and it still by no means makes the crime any less, is that the victim was a consenting partner.
I have a feeling more sleepless nights are coming my way over this.
 Please pray for the victim of this horrid crime  as well as all involved.
And pray for my church.

Good Night and God Bless.