The anti-Christian influence continues to triumph in this country. The Army just disinvited Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, to speak at the Pentagon on Prayer Day. They claim that his recent remarks about Islam being evil would make the Muslims mad. There may not even be a National Day of Prayer because the atheist won a court ruling that claims it to be unconstitutional. The atheist say they feel left out when there is a day of prayer because they don’t believe in prayer.

With some of the examples I have recently heard about prayers, perhaps the day should be canceled. People usually turn to prayer when they are in distress and will promise God all sorts of things if their prayer is granted. I recently heard of a guy who was driving around the parking lot of a large mall looking for a convenient parking spot. He started to pray for a spot and promised God he would go to church every Sunday and give up his sinful ways if he would provide a parking spot. Just before he said Amen, a car pulled out and opened a choice spot. The man quickly said, “that’s okay God, I just found one.”

Another example of prayer was described by one of my favorite authors, Ferrol Sams. He told about this drunk who staggered home, drunk and sick. He told his wife Mamie to pray for him because he was dying. The wife was trying to put him to bed and he said, “please pray for me right now because I’m dying.” She immediately got on her knees and said, “dear Almighty God please put your healing hand on my poor drunk husband.” With that, the drunk looked up and said, “hell Mamie, don’t tell him I’m drunk.”

It seems as if our prayers are often misdirected and perhaps Prayer Day could help us to better learn to pray. I’m sorry that it is now considered unconstitutional and other things like the Army’s decision to rescind the invitation to Franklin Graham are heading us down a path to the Dark Side.

My prayer from the porch is that God will guide our leaders to make the right decisions as he did for our Founding Fathers. The above picture of a statue of an American soldier in Iraq might represent another example of prayer. The soldier is kneeling in prayer in memorial to a fallen comrade and is comforted by an Iraqi girl. That’s pretty meaningful.