National Day of Prayer being celebrating Thursday
On April 17, 1952, President Harry Truman signed a bill proclaiming the National Day of Prayer into law in the United States. President Ronald Reagan amended the law in 1988, designating the first Thursday of May each year as the National Day of Prayer. The National Prayer Committee was formed in the U.S. in 1972.
“The National Day of Prayer has been going on for a long time, and it’s been going on ever since,” said Poteau First Baptist Church Pastor Troy George, a Poteau Kiwanis Club member, to his fellow Kiwanians during the local civic organization’s weekly meeting Thursday afternoon at Western Sizzlin. “What it does is it allows people from all different parts of our city to come together as one and mainly pray for our government and leadership, our local leadership and for the churches in the area — whoever needs prayer. It’s all of us.”
This year, George’s church will be having a special ceremony from 7-8 a.m. Thursday, with more happening all during the business day. “Last year, they held it at the Reynolds Center, and that worked out really well,” George said. “It’s a big area. This year, there’s another event going on there, so they were going to have to minimize the space that was going to be available. Being a downtown church in the middle of everything, I said, ‘Why don’t we go ahead and hold it at our place, First Baptist Church inside the Family Life Center.’ It’s the first time for us to be doing it. It’s a pretty good-sized place, and we can have everybody who is from any church that would like to be a part of this come and wants to pray. There will be about seven different leaders of prayer that will be speaking. We’ll have a little bit of music, then just some prayer individually wherever you’re sitting. It will last about an hour. Be sure and come. We’d love to have people from your churches come. We’ll open up our sanctuary until 5 p.m. that day, so if you just want to come in and pray. We would love to have you guys be a part of it. Invite folks that you know and join in with the prayer. I think the mayor (Scotty White) and city leaders will be leading some of that.” Until recently, George wasn’t certain what organization helped put on the Poteau event for National Day of Prayer, but he soon found out. “Some people ask who puts on the National Day of Prayer here in the Poteau area,” he said. “I really didn’t know until last year. It’s the (LeFlore County) Ministerial Alliance. It’s churches in this area. They may be Methodist, Assembly of God or Baptist — different ones.”