Senate Chaplain Barry Black opened Day 6 of the Senate Impeachment Trial of President Donald Trump with this prayer:
LET US PRAY. ETERNAL GOD, THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. UNITE OUR SENATORS IN THEIR STRIVING TO DO YOUR WILL. LORD, YOU HAVE BEEN OUR HELP IN AGES PAST. YOU ARE OUR HOPE FOR THE YEARS TO COME. WE TRUST THE POWER OF YOUR PREVAILING PROVIDENCE TO BREAK THIS IMPEACHMENT TRIAL TO THE CONCLUSION YOU DESIRE. LORD, WE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT OUR THOUGHTS. AND YOUR WAYS ARE NOT OUR WAYS. FOR AS THE HEAVENS ARE HIGHER THAN THE EARTH, SO ARE YOUR THOUGHTS HIGHER THAN OUR THOUGHTS. AND YOUR WAYS HIGHER THAN OUR WAYS. LORD, WE LOVE YOU. EMPOWER OUR SENATORS, RENEW THEIR STRENGTH. WE PRAY IN YOUR DEPENDABLE NAME, AMEN.
In this prayer Chaplain Black uses Biblical language directly from John 14:6, Isaiah 55:8-9, Isaiah 40:31, in addition to quoting a traditional Christian hymn from Isaac Watts, who drew from Psalm 90 for the lyrics. Clearly, a prayer to the God of the Bible was offered in Congress.
My immediate response upon listening to Chaplain Black’s prayer above was one of elation. What a wonderful moment where our country officially, publicly acknowledged the God of the Bible and called for His help in a national arena!
My next response was confusion. How is this possible? How could the same Senators, many of whom repeatedly fight against the expression of Christianity and the Bible in public places, allow such a prayer to happen?
How can prayer be allowed in Congress and not in public schools? It seems incongruous.
The answer, legally, comes from the Supreme Court. In a landmark ruling “Marsh vs Chambers” the Court ruled that “legislative prayer” is a different form and function that other public prayer, serving a more civic duty than a religious one. The Court held that legislative prayer was part of the “fabric of society” and thus admissible.
However, I am still confused.
If it can be ruled by the Supreme Court of the United States that Congressional prayer is acceptable due to its historical role in American society, why cannot the same argument be made for public prayer of all types?
I would call the situation astounding.
Regardless, I think we as believers can take great solace in the fact that there is still a remnant of Truth being proclaimed from the highest national platform, and that Truth expanding even further into the public sphere is not outside the realm of possibility. Be encouraged!
America is no longer a Christian nation. I don’t mean that there are not plenty of Christians in America. What I mean is that our leaders and our neighbors are no longer basing their decisions on biblical truths. To deny that is to deny reality. The America with the Bible as her belt and the buckle in the South is no more. So what does this mean for our churches?
In Hebrews 4:12, the Bible describes itself as being alive. Yes, alive as in living. It is this facet that gives the Bible its inexhaustible nature. But what does this mean, “alive” or “living”? How can a book be alive?
Let me give you an illustration: suppose you had a choice of spending every day for the next fifty years with your spouse vs. spending every day for the next fifty years with a stuffed animal.
After awhile, you would grow very bored with one (insert marriage jokes here) and fall more and more in love with the other.
What is the difference?
The difference is interaction.
Things that are alive, generally speaking, interact with us. That’s why we have pet dogs and not pet cement bags. Even live plants have some unspoken advantage over fake plants – they are interacting with us through our shared environment and stimuli we provide them.
Living things engage us in ways non-living things do not. There is something about life.
There is something about God’s Word that makes it different from any other book in my library – life. Interaction. Engagement. Because of this, people can devote their entire lives to studying and learning the Bible, never exhausting its resources.
Living things communicate, respond, interact with us.
The Bible is alive, and it speaks to us and teaches us as a living, breathing instructor before us.
America is great, not because of her location, geography, military, or money. America is great because of her ideas.
On July 4, 1776, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was set forth by a “band of brothers” – the founding fathers of the United States – in the face of the mighty British empire.
