Eleanor’s Faith

Both President Trump and Texas Governor Gregg Abbott have declared September 3, 2017 as a Day of Prayer following the destruction of the Texas Gulf Coast and Houston area after Hurricane Harvey last week.  There has been much praying already for these areas and I am hopeful that this Day of Prayer will remind people how important it is to pray.

Eleanor Roosevelt was not only the First Lady during a difficult time for our nation, but she was also a powerful humanitarian and lobbied for human rights until the time of her death. She and President Roosevelt believed in doing everything they could to help others who were less fortunate. She was also a woman of faith. In his book Eleanor and Franklin Joseph P. Lash writes the following about her:

Fundamentally Eleanor was neither stateswoman, politician, nor feminist.  She was a woman with a deep sense of spiritual mission.  Like Saint Theresa, she not only “had a powerful intellect of the practical order” but was a woman of extravagant tenderness and piety.  There was always some prayer in her purse to recall her to her Christian vocation.  Christ’s story was a drama that re-enacted itself repeatedly in her thoughts and feelings.  Amid the worldliness, the pomp, and the power of Washington she managed to hold vivid and intimate communion with Christ with a child’s innocence and simplicity.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16b NIV