[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 77 (Thursday, May 4, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2766-S2768]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         National Day of Prayer

  Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, it is a busy day. There is a lot going 
on in Washington, DC. Quite frankly, at home there is a lot going on in 
homes, families, and lives. Today is also a unique day for America as 
well. It is the one day that we as a nation have something called the 
National Day of Prayer. It started in 1988. It was an official day on 
this day, the first Thursday of May. But in the 1950s, Harry Truman 
started this process of a national day of prayer. So it far precedes 
that.
  Our Nation has a rich and beautiful history in prayer. Members of the 
House and Senate, as the Presiding Officer knows, open the day every 
day with a prayer. It has been that way from the very beginning. Even 
the first Continental Congress on September 7, 1774, opened in prayer.
  Tonight, Americans will gather in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol 
to celebrate the National Day of Prayer. Statuary Hall was once the 
House of Representatives, where the House gathered. It was also the 
largest gathering place in Washington, DC, and many churches for years 
met in Statuary Hall to be able to pray. It was the common meeting 
place. In fact, for a period of time in the early 1800s, four churches 
a Sunday used at that time the House of Representatives Chamber--what 
is now known as Statuary Hall--as their place for worship.
  Thomas Jefferson worshipped there. In fact, every President from 
Thomas Jefferson all the way to Abraham Lincoln attended church on 
Sundays in Statuary Hall, what was at that time the House of 
Representatives Chamber.
  That is an interesting fact. I have had folks talk about Thomas 
Jefferson's statement about the wall of separation between church and 
state. That was actually in a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the 
Danbury Baptist Association, saying they would not allow the State to 
take over churches--that there would be this wall of separation between 
church and state. Two days after President Jefferson wrote that 
statement, he attended church in the House of Representatives Chamber 
on a Sunday.
  Even earlier, at our Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin 
Franklin stated: ``In the beginning of the Contest with Great Britain, 
when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for 
Divine protection.''
  Many U.S. Presidents have signed proclamations for national prayer 
since 1799, from George Washington all the way to the present.
  The National Day of Prayer is a good day for us to be able to reflect 
as a Nation and to be able to remember well that there are many people 
of faith in our country that do believe there is a Creator God and that 
he has made a difference in our own personal lives and he has made a 
difference in our Nation.
  We go back to President Truman's statement. He said in 1952: ``The 
President shall set aside and proclaim a suitable day each year, other 
than a Sunday, as a National Day of Prayer, on which the people of the 
United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation in churches, in 
groups, and as individuals.''
  As I mentioned, in 1988, President Reagan even affirmed that.

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  I don't think I could find very many Americans who would say we are 
running out of things to pray for: debt; anger in the Nation; 
conversation about hard, difficult issues that we face; terrorism and 
threats of violence from around the world. We are not out of things to 
pray for. Far from it. But people of faith believe that, regardless of 
the obstacles we face, there is a God that we can call out to who hears 
us and who cares about our daily lives. He is not a God who just 
created and walked away. He is a God whom we can know, and we feel 
confident that God knows and loves us.
  Philippians 4:6 says: ``Do not be anxious about anything, but in 
everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your 
requests be made known to God.''
  I am always encouraged when I travel around Oklahoma and around the 
Nation. I even ran into some people this week who stopped me in the 
hallway and just said: ``I want you to know I'll pray for you.''
  I encourage Americans to pray for the President, for the Vice 
President, for their Cabinet, for the Supreme Court, for Members of the 
Senate and of the House, for the staff who serve around us and with us 
and serve people around this country, for our military, and for first 
responders. The list could go on and on of people who set aside their 
time and their life to be able to serve. It is not an unreasonable 
request to be able to say: Pray for them; ask God to continue to 
protect them.
  It is amazing to me how many Christians I bump into of my own faith 
who find it easier to complain about government than it is to pray for 
those in government. I think that is an issue we need to fix, and today 
is a good day to begin that, on this National Day of Prayer.
  I remember well, personally, that I grew up around the church. My mom 
dragged me to church. I mean it. She made me go. But I remember 
extremely well sitting in the balcony of the church one Sunday and 
actually paying attention to our pastor as he would read through 
Scriptures. Probably for the first time in my life, I started actually 
thinking about this one simple truth: There is a God, and I don't know 
Him.
  I couldn't shake that reality. Laying in bed late that Sunday night 
by myself, I remember praying--probably for me, for the first time in 
my life, actually praying. And I prayed a very simple 8-year-old 
prayer. My prayer was this: God, I don't know You, but I know I have 
done things wrong in my life and I need Your forgiveness. Would You 
come into my life and take control?
  It was the beginning point for me--just the most simple of ways for 
me to begin a relationship with God, trusting in His forgiveness and 
His ability to forgive.
  I have in my office two paintings that hang. One painting is the 
hands of a potter at a wheel, shaping the clay as they choose to. It 
reminds me of the sovereignty of God. Below it is a painting of those 
same hands sitting at that same bowl holding it, but this time the bowl 
is done. It is full of water. There is a towel in it, and there are 
feet around the bowl. It reminds me of the call to serve that we all 
have--to be able to serve people in the most humble of ways. It reminds 
me that there is a God, and that He has called us to a task. Part of 
that task is to pray.
  The National Day of Prayer is not a mandate from the Federal 
Government that all people should pray--far from it. It is just a 
reminder. It is a reminder for people of faith who choose to pray that 
this is a good day when we can reset to be able to pray for our Nation 
and for our leaders. It is an acknowledgement, quite frankly, that 
millions of people of faith believe in God and that those individuals 
believe that God hears our prayers and responds. So thus we should 
pray.
  Culturally, it is fascinating to me to be able to talk to people 
about prayer. I ran into some people that find it perfectly permissible 
in times of great struggle and anguish to pray, but in times of 
thanksgiving, it seems odd. Let me give a for instance.
  A couple of years ago, a football coach in our country was fired from 
his job because at the end of a football game he would kneel down after 
the game was over and thank God for the safety of his players. For 
that, he was released from his job because, for some reason, Americans 
don't accept prayers of thanksgiving. But at those same football games, 
if a player was injured and the coaches and players were to kneel down, 
the crowd would see that as a good sign of respect--that we respect 
someone who is injured, and it is entirely reasonable to pray when 
there is an injury on the field but maybe not if it is just a prayer of 
thanksgiving.
  It is an odd season for us as a nation, trying to figure out who we 
are and what we believe and if Americans of faith can live their faith. 
I would challenge us as a country, for those of us who have faith, to 
be able to live our faith with integrity and with consistency, and on a 
National Day of Prayer like this, to remind our Nation that there are 
millions of people of faith but that there are also millions of people 
that have no faith at all. They are also Americans, and they are also 
to be respected because many people are on a journey with God.
  There are many people who don't practice faith at all today that 
consider simple things in their life. Their financial house may be in 
order. Their family life may be in order. But their spiritual life 
remains a vacuum, and they are, quite frankly, trying to figure that 
out.
  I am always interested in the stories of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham 
Lincoln in his earliest political campaigns was chastised that he was 
anti-faith or that he was secretly an atheist because he never attended 
church everywhere. He said he had respect for the Bible and read the 
Bible and had respect for faith, but he just personally didn't practice 
it. In his earliest campaigns, he was really challenged by that and 
only narrowly won at times. In fact, he lost some of his campaigns, and 
he had attributed losing those campaigns to people having challenged 
him that he was anti-faith.
  But then we read his words when he was President of the United 
States, and we find a person who was on a journey with God. It wasn't 
anti-faith. He just didn't practice faith.
  But listen to these words in 1863 from President Lincoln. He 
proclaimed a National Day of Prayer, as every President before him has, 
and he wrote this:

       We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of 
     Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace 
     and in prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and 
     power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have 
     forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which 
     preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and 
     strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the 
     deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were 
     produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. 
     Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-
     sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving 
     grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves 
     us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to 
     confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and 
     forgiveness.

  That is a man who was on a journey with God, who came to the 
Presidency as a person of no faith, who understood the 
responsibilities, and his heart dramatically changed.
  It is a good day for us to reflect on this National Day of Prayer. I 
would encourage the Nation, if they choose, to be able to watch and 
join in or to just quietly be able to pray on their own, to remember 
again that those of us who pray for others should probably spend some 
time praying for ourselves as well. At times, as we criticize others, 
we should probably self-evaluate and ask the simple question: Do we 
live the values that we demand of others?
  It is a good day to pray. Later tonight, I will stand in that 
historic Statuary Hall where Presidents and Members of Congress and 
individuals have prayed for a long time, and I will read Daniel, 
Chapter 9 to the group, which reads:

       Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your 
     servant. For your sake, Lord, look with favor on your 
     desolate sanctuary. Give ear, our God, and hear us.

  It is a similar prayer that many of us pray in gatherings all over 
this Capitol every week. Members of the House and the Senate and staff 
quietly find places in this building to pray. It is not a bad idea for 
the Nation to join us.
  Hear, O God, our prayer. We need Your help.
  Mr. President, I yield back.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

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  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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