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National Day of Prayer
Minute for Mission
 Yupic singers offer praise to God.
Beginning on the Eastern Seaboard of the country, with early morning Korean and other breakfast prayers, the prayer chain continues through the early morning prayers of business folk, during coffee time until the noon prayer groups voice their concerns.
The prayers continue through the day until churches in Waimea and Kekaha on Kaua’i in Hawai’i hold evening prayers. The language may be Hawaiian, Filipino, Japanese, Tongan, or possibly pidgin.Then the congregations of Savoonga and Gambell on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska meet, first singing some hymns to the beat of a drum with hide stretched over it. Their prayers may be in Yupic, Korean, or Inupiat, but God is multilingual and knows the fervor of the hearts directed toward him.
The National Day of Prayer was instituted by an action of Congress in 1988. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared a day of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer.” At that time the nation was divided by war and the need was for reconciliation.
We have come through an election with the country divided by politics and war, but our strength is in God the father. The prayer chain is needed to bind us together. Our prayers are for peace, patience, progress, and the presence of God’s will for us as a nation and individual members thereof.
—Rev. Ken Smith, retired, the Presbytery of Yukon
PC(USA) General Assembly Staff
Troy Hardy, BOP
Alyssa Harley, GAMC
Harry Harper, FDN
Gracious Father, prompted by our prayer, let us do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with you. Unite us in love as we are bound by our prayers to be one people, attentive to your will, a beacon of light in a world of darkness. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Ps. 47, 147:12–20 Ps. 68, 113
Jer. 31:1–14
Col. 2:8–23; Luke 6:39–49
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