Praying for Miracles

The Ministry of Social Transformation, Public Service, Human Resource Development, Youth and Sports in the current United Workers Party Government has declared a National Day of Prayer and/or Fasting this coming Monday, March 17th, and asks that all St. Lucians participate.
Prayers on behalf of the nation, under the theme “If My People Pray” will be said throughout the day so that we may receive God’s help in the travails we are presently undergoing in just about every aspect of life in this country.
We are primarily a Christian nation (although we are certain that, out of love for country, even those of other faiths will participate) and there is no doubt that the exercise will have beneficial effects, especially for the uplifting of spirit of those whose hearts will be gladdened in the knowledge that they have placed their troubles in God’s hands and that He, in His beneficence, will take away all problems and make things right.
St. Lucians may even be witnesses and recipients of a miracle or two that will go toward making things right, for we know that “with God, all things are possible”.
We must however, put forward another equally-popular saying, “God helps those who help themselves” and it is our prayer that the bulk of the population also keeps that in mind and marries their invoking of Divine help with a little honest effort of our own, to assist Almighty God with the hand-up that we are expecting He will give us.

Even before we get to our knees next Monday, during that special day, between our prayer sessions and in the period thereafter, perhaps we can take a look at our situation and conclude that all is not so lost that only God can take us out of our morass.
With a little less backbiting and backstabbing; with a little less cheating in our dealings with each other wherein it seems that personal material gain – even at our neighbour’s expense – is the sole reason why we conduct any business at all; with a little less all-consuming hatred manifesting itself because our brother wears a differently-coloured political tee-shirt; with a little more application to honest toil as the means of getting the wherewithal to support our too-extravagant excessive “necessities”; with a little more time devoted to the upbringing and training of our children, teaching them to aspire to be upstanding, honest, God-fearing adults with an ingrained work ethic sense; and with a high regard for decency and respect toward one another …
Then perhaps we shall be able to convince ourselves that the improvement we would witness in our country’s (and our own) affairs is due solely to the fact that we got down on our knees on Monday the 17th March and that Almighty God heard our prayers, listened and performed a great miracle on our behalf, out of His boundless love for us.
Never forget though: if you want someone to love you, you must love yourself first.