So ... PTC doesn’t need God’s help?

The Supreme Court opens every session with the prayerful cry, “God save the United States and this honorable court.” The cry, or prayer, is said by the court’s marshal or deputy marshal. The marshal is a paid position. The U. S. Senate pays a chaplain, in part, to open each session with a prayer. He is paid $140,300 a year. The U. S. House pays a chaplain, in part, to open each session with prayer. He is paid $160,600.

Bring it on down. The Georgia House of Representatives opens each day’s session with prayer offered by different members of the clergy throughout the state. The same is true for the Georgia Senate. They are not paid for their prayers as it well should be.

Bring it on down. The Fayette County Commission says a prayer at the beginning of each session. The Fayette County School Board opens with prayer. Even the City of Atlanta, in their official posted minutes, allows for an invocation.

Bring it on down. However! On the other hand! Yet! The City of Peachtree City has decided that since the voters kicked out Steve Brown as mayor, it no longer needs to call on the name of God at the beginning of its regular council meeting. At least that’s what the Fayette edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in its Feb. 16 edition.

New Mayor Harold Logsdon, in deciding against the practice of saying a prayer at the beginning of each session, was reported as saying, “I’m not one that’s comfortable with prayer in public. It’s a personal thing.”

Jesus disapproved of public prayer also when those public prayers were offered to call attention to the ones praying. The story goes that following a prayer offered by a minister, the speaker commented, “That was one of the greatest prayers ever offered to a Boston audience.” Prayer isn’t offered to an audience of 10 or 10,000. It’s offered to an audience of one — God.

And I am sure that Jesus would disapprove of prayer when it was just an item on a meeting’s agenda to make everything look nice.

I suggest that the Peachtree City Council give a little discussion of why would there be a prayer on any agenda in the first place. Perhaps there would be those who would say that they needed wisdom beyond their wisdom to discuss and settle the city’s affairs. Perhaps the mayor, regardless of his comfort zone, would acknowledge the city of Peachtree City needed God’s help as much as possible and he would not allow his comfort zone to deprive his favored city from all that God could do. God is bigger than the politics of any city.

Remember 9/11/01. Before that Tuesday morning, police were effective at keeping those “holy-roller” prayer meetings off the streets of New York City. Then all of a sudden, prayer was welcomed at every corner and God was the acknowledged refuge in our time of trouble. Prayer was the order of the day.

Surely if the Supreme Court can cry out to God to save the United States, council men and women across our great land can cry out the same, “God save our schools, our cities, and our counties.” Amen!