Good afternoon! It was a nice, sunny day here in Mt. Vernon, and today we brought you ‘who knew’s’ about tomorrow’s event, the National Day of Prayer.

Our National Day of Prayer gathering is going to be tomorrow night, at 7 o’clock.
If it’s raining, this event will be held in Thorne Performance Hall in the Chapel of MVNU.
If it’s not raining, it will be held on the public square in Mt. Vernon.

If you’d like to check out their website, you can do that here!

Here’s some fun facts about the National Day of Prayer!

The mission of the National Day of Prayer Task Force is to mobilize prayer in America and to encourage personal repentance and righteousness in the culture.

The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May, inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation. It was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. Our Task Force is a privately funded organization whose purpose is to encourage participation on the National Day of Prayer. It exists to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, to create appropriate materials, and to mobilize the Christian community to intercede for America’s leaders and its families. The Task Force represents a Judeo-Christian expression of the national observance, based on our understanding that this country was birthed in prayer and in reverence for the God of the Bible.

“Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the time for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and right can never be safer than in their hands, where the Constitution has deposited it.” 
—Thomas Jefferson, 1808

1st John 5:14 says:
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, He hears us.”

And in Ephesians 3:20&21, it reminds us of this…
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we askor imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Our word of the day today was ‘minatory’! 
This is an adjective that means menacing or threatening.

Minatory is from the Latin minārī, which means “to threaten,” Another derivative in Latin is the Late Latin noun minātor, which its’ definition lends itself more to cattle,  and it means: “one whodrives cattle with threats, drover.” This “country” usage persisted in French, in which the verb mener, a direct descendant of Latin minārī, means “to lead.”Minatory entered English in the 16th century.

Now there’s the animal the Minotaur, which you’d think has some roots to the word ‘minatory’, but it actually doesn’t. A minotaur is part bull, and part man. The word Minotaur he term actually finds its roots from the Ancient Greek Μῑνώταυρος, a compound of the name Μίνως, which translates as Minos, and the noun ταύρος, which means “bull“, translated as “(the) Bull of Minos”.  And Minos, in Greek Mythology, was the first King of Crete. And Minos was the son of Zeus and Europa.

You get a little bit of a double dose of definitions and a history lesson today for the Word of the Day, so I hope you enjoyed it 🙂

Thanks for listening, and we hope to see you tomorrow for the National Day of Prayer!
-Lilly