A time for prayer

By Staff
Sept. 16, 2001
Our Father, Who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For Thine is the kingdom
And the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
The Lord's Prayer
The true extent of the destruction may take months to identify. Innocent lives lost, families shattered, a nation shaken by the fierce audacity of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Millions of square feet of office space that housed a miracle of the modern age collapsed into hundreds of thousands of tons of twisted steel and dust. Little particles of people's lives scattered about like so much meaningless debris.
We already know the economic cost will be enormous. American airlines are losing $300 million a day and one, Continental, has already announced layoffs of 12,000 employees.
But beyond the economic cost, beyond whatever the price may be for the coming war against terrorism, America is driven to find meaning in the wake of chaos. Americans will recover, rebuild and avenge the deaths and destruction rained down upon this country in Tuesday's terrorist assaults.
We live in that kind of country.
In times of crisis, we turn to God and prayer.
Why prayer?
Prayer brings about good effects. It is an efficacious and useful remedy against evils. Prayer frees us from trials and sadness of the soul. Prayer is a deeply personal expression of faith that draws us closer to God.
The stirring portraits of Americans in prayer also serve to draw us together, to unify our spirit in a time of crisis, to give our people the necessary collective strength to persevere.
We live in a country that abandoned prayer in our schools for the sake of political correctness. That should change. Every student should pray and a government created by Founding Fathers committed to the ideal of freedoms should encourage it.
That's the America we need.
The Seventh Petition of The Lord's Prayer seems especially applicable today as we begin a new fight against the evil of terrorism and, possibly, against the countries on this Earth that give it shelter:
President Bush has described the evil we face today, and as local people make their contributions to comforting the direct victims we must also turn to confronting the evil. The confrontation will be lengthy and our leaders are trying to prepare us. It will not end soon. Many more lives are likely to be disrupted.
The evil strikes with extreme force. Evil operates like a skillful general, seeking weaknesses and they found one that worked for then, this time freedom.
But freedom is not a weakness. It is a strength as the perpetrators of this heinous crime will discover.
As we embrace our own families and hold loved ones just a little closer today, we thank God for America. We grieve. We express condolences to the victims as our leaders seek out the guilty.
We are grateful, too, for the final word in The Lord's Prayer. The word "Amen" underscores our belief that our prayers have been heard.
In this time of crisis, local people have already reacted by praying, lighting candles, donating blood, collecting contributions for service agencies, volunteering for military service, sending messages of sympathy and hope and engaged in a hundred other seemingly small acts showing their connections to other Americans in need. Only the acts are not small; they are generous and genuine.
Today and tomorrow and for the rest of the days each of us is allotted on this Earth, let us continue to pray for each other, for our country and for the freedoms we hold so dear.