National Day of Prayer, 1990

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

George Bush

"More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of," wrote Lord Tennyson more than a century ago. Today, we are deeply mindful of the truth of his words. Our Nation's history and the lives of millions of men and women around the world provide compelling evidence of the power of faith and the efficacy of prayer.

The Bible tells us what we have often seen for ourselves: that God answers the prayers of those who place their trust in Him. In the Old Testament story of Hannah and Samuel and the New Testament parable of the Prodigal Son, we find a universal experience of parenthood: long hours spent in waiting for a child and in prayer for his well-being. What mother or father has not, in unspoken thought, asked the Almighty to protect his or her little ones and thanked Him for their safekeeping?

Our ancestors believed that, in the lives of nations as well as individuals, the love of God is a great parental love like this. They saw history as the place where our Creator looks for His children, longing for them to come to Him and to do His will. As they fashioned a system of government that would carry the United States into an uncharted future, as they fled oppressed and war-torn nations to build new lives in this land of opportunity, as they shielded the spark of hope from the cold winds of tyranny and world war, time and again they came, thankful and contrite, to the inextinguishable light of the Father's house.

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