Pastor's Corner: Reflecting on the National Day of Prayer

In 1952, it became law that the president of the United States would declare a National Day of Prayer. Since the late 1980s, it is customary for this annual observance to take place on the first Thursday in May. The most recent formulation of this law, written in 1998, describes it as a day “on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.”

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, yesterday’s Day of Prayer events looked different from past gatherings, but the desire for people of faith to seek unity through prayer remained the same.

Religious people are sometimes known more for what divides them than for their shared commitments. Events like the Day of Prayer offer a challenge, then, for people of faith. They provide an opportunity for reflection: how do our faith commitments shape the way we pray for the well-being of not only our nation but all peoples of the world? How do our respective beliefs about God, the world, and our place in it affect our attempts to unite in national prayer?

The theme for this year’s Day of Prayer was “Pray God’s Glory Across the Earth.” This theme was based on Habakkuk 2:14: “But the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” Taken in isolation, this verse captures a hopeful promise, that the glorious goodness of God would be as widespread as water is in the ocean. It is a poetic image of fullness, completion, and satisfaction, of a world put right. A world put right is surely something to pray for.

We might have our own ideas for what a world made right looks like, for what a nation or world “filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord” should be. But the surrounding text in Habakkuk has some specific national and international problems in mind. The hopeful promise of verse 2:14 comes during a series of five oracles of woe in verses 6-20 against an unnamed tyrannical figure. The prophet Habakkuk pronounces that destruction will befall this unnamed leader, who enriches his house through plunder, bloodshed and violence toward the nations of the world (vv. 6-8), whose greed will lead to his house’s downfall (vv. 9-11), who has founded a city through bloodshed, injustice and exploitation (vv. 12-14), who treats his neighbors shamefully (vv. 15-17), and who relies on false gods for power (vv. 18-20). It is amidst the naming of these specific failures of an earthly leader and political regime that the prophetic speaker places his hope in God, in a divine governance whose goodness transcends the corrupted powers of Habakkuk’s era.

So, at least according to Habakkuk 2, when we pray for “God’s glory across the earth,” for a world put right, we are not simply praying generically for peace and prosperity. We are not praying for a return to a golden age now past that probably never was. We are not praying that “our people” — in whatever limited way we might define who “our people” are — gain dominance over perceived enemies. We are praying for a sacred transformation of this world that is yet to fully come and is so profound that it can be hard to fully envision. But, as much as our hope is Habakkuk’s hope, this transformation arrives at least in part by naming and lamenting the specific destructions wrought by injustice, prosperity gained through violent exploitation, and power rooted in manipulation.

May God empower us to see ever more clearly what our world might become when transformed by the luminous goodness of God.

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The Rev. Megan Hoewisch is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Havre.