Laying hands on President Trump

First things first

Meeting and re-meeting some of you at my Barnes & Noble book signing Friday night was an honor. Thank you for the encouraging words, book purchases and continued support. Your kindness makes me want to push forward.

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Last Tuesday, Johnnie Moore, president of The Kairos Company, tweeted a photograph of President Donald Trump surrounded by people praying for him in the Oval Office while laying hands on him. The image elicited an outpouring of outrage from anti-Trump folks on the left.

Some people played the separation of church and state card. Others went right for Trump's character, alleging that a prayer for him was a wasted prayer. Others called it voodoo.

I've come to expect this opposition to prayer, particularly as I reflect on 2012, when Democrats appeared to have booed God at their convention after a vote to restore "God" to their party platform. But it's the cluelessness of the leftist media that stands out, the lack of understanding what is going on when pastors and faith leaders pray for our president. The public witnessed this last week, compliments of the news reporting of CNN's Erin Burnett. She was both baffled and belligerent at the sight of our president engaged in prayer.

She called the tweeted photo a "stunning image" and "something we don't see every day." She said it was "very strange" that "all of those hands" were "sort of touching" him. No, Burnett. Praying for someone is neither stunning nor strange and should be an everyday occurrence. What's stunning are a media so out-of-touch with the vast majority of Americans, many of whom not only profess to believe in God, but who actually pray to Him. Praying is anything but strange. Professing to believe in the power of prayer and then not praying is what's strange, especially during a time in which humans are so obviously in need of a Savior. What's strange is not trusting that no one is so far gone that God cannot reach him, so low that God cannot lift him or so lofty that God cannot humble him.

America has a history of praying for our nation and our nation's leaders. No matter what side of the political aisle one sits, we should all be able to agree that our president's openness to prayer is a good thing. Not one prayer for him is a wasted prayer. It's the leader who thinks he doesn't need prayer who concerns me--or the media personality who mocks it--not the president who recognizes his need of it and submits to it.

Perhaps it's the act of laying hands on him that is the problem for some of these folks. Maybe they have never seen anything like it, though I have to wonder where these people have been, particularly with all the people on the left who profess Christianity. But perhaps that's what's causing the issue. It need not. It's not "very strange" at all. It's not even a little strange. On the contrary, it's quite normal for Christians, and many Bible passages validate its normalcy. Here are just a few:

• Mark 10:16: And He took them in His arms and began blessing them, laying His hands on them.
• Luke 4:40: Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them.
• Acts 28:8: And it happened that the father of Publius was lying in bed afflicted with recurrent fever and dysentery; and Paul went in to see him and after he had prayed, he laid his hands on him and healed him.
• Mark 6:5: And He could do no miracle there except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.
• 1 Timothy 4:14: Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery.

Fellow Americans, we may never be in the same room with President Trump to reach out our hands and lay them on him as we pray for him, but we can still reach out our hearts and pray for him wherever we are. Let's commit to that. Much depends on it.

God bless our president, and God bless America.

Adrienne Ross is owner of Adrienne Ross Communications and a former Southeast Missourian editorial board member. Contact her at aross@semissourian.com.