Pray without ceasing for our schools

He introduced himself to me with a smile, calling himself a “retiring pastor.” Said he will be 84 years old next month. He was at Dauphin Junior High School to pray, he said. He remembers when praying in Enterprise City Schools was more than a once a year “Prayer Walk.”

At New Brockton Elementary School, a young pastor, whose daughter was a kindergartener and whose wife was an aide at the school, led a group of parents, grandparents, school personnel and community members in a heartfelt charge to follow the command of the apostle Paul in the Bible book of Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing.”

All seven schools in the Dale County School System had a prayer walk organized by a local church in the respective communities this year. The program was started by the now DCS Superintendent Ben Baker 10 years ago when he was the Ariton School principal.

Daleville Baptist Church conducted a prayer walk through Daleville City Schools July 31. Sunday was the Annual School Prayer Walk sponsored by the Coffee County Baptist Women’s Mission.

The prayer walks have been held for at least three decades and consists of concerned, caring people coming together at all the public schools in the Daleville, Enterprise, Elba and Coffee County School Systems on a designated day and hour to walk the school halls covering them in prayer.

For students who have difficult home lives, cuts in school funding, pressure to pass standardized tests and school bullying, those are among the issues that I heard being prayed for as hundreds of all ages walked quietly through the school halls pausing at classrooms and lockers to bow in prayer.

The soon-to-be-84-year-old pastor shared stories of days gone by when prayer was a way of life and pastors were welcomed inside the schoolhouse walls. “Then came Madalyn O’Hair,” he said, referring to the founder of the American Atheists who won the court battle to remove prayer from public schools in 1962.

It’s easy to credit Ms. O’Hair for the multitude of ills that befall society today but I tend to subscribe more to the theory that it is not a single watershed event but instead a million little baby steps that are the cause.

Take the age old story about the frog being slowly boiled to death. The short version of the tale is that if a frog is suddenly plopped into boiling water, it will jump out. Just like us.

But if that same frog is put in warm water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive imminent danger and will be cooked to death. Just like us.

As we gradually adjust to—and accept—a negative environment, we open the door to a disastrous outcome through slow erosion.

“We want our children and our school personnel to know that we cover them every day in prayer,” said the prayer walk organizers. “But on this day we gather as a community to ask God’s blessing on them throughout the year.”

What a great idea.

A family whose children attend a private Christian school walked the halls of a city school praying for those who attended it. Their own school was not having a prayer walk. “We pray there every day,” the mother said matter-of-factly.

What a great idea.

Michelle Mann is a staff writer for The Southeast Sun and Daleville Sun-Courier. The opinions of this writer are her own and not the opinion of the paper. She can be reached at (334) 393-2969 or by email at [email protected].