Article October 9, 2000 Issue

Voting with assurance

Prayer's place at the polls

By Susan Booth Mack

The election of the next president of the United States will soon take place. The campaign leading up to the election got me thinking the other day about how much I used to dislike voting—not just for president, but also at clubs, at church business meetings, in professional situations, and in every other situation as well. Don't get me wrong—I definitely appreciated the right to vote. It was figuring out which way to vote, and then feeling good about it, that troubled me.

But a time came when I learned an important lesson that has made me feel much better about participating in all kinds of voting situations. It happened when I was president of the board of an organization that provided care to people in need. As trustees, we made policy decisions that could potentially affect thousands of people. We had to cast votes all the time.

One evening at a board meeting, we faced a decision that was highly emotional and confusing. We had voted unanimously just one year earlier to take a certain course of action that we were now feeling pressure to reverse. We discussed the matter thoroughly, but no solution seemed clear. So we agreed that we would take some time to pray and would wait for a couple of weeks before voting.

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What is prayer? And how do you do it? (Part two)

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