A GNA News Feature by Boakye-Dankwa Boadi

Accra, Jan. 28, GNA - The decision of President John Evans Atta Mills to consult with the Leadership of the Ghanaian religious organisations to observe Sunday February 1 2009 as national day of prayer and thanksgiving struck a harmonious note in some ears while others rather heard a dissonance.

The GNA reported: "President John Evans Atta Mills in consultation with the Leadership of the Ghanaian Clergy has declared Sunday February 1 as a national day of prayer and thanksgiving for the recent peaceful and successful elections. "In view of this there would be special Muslim prayers under the auspices of the National Chief Imam, Sheik Nuhu Sharebutu on Friday January 30 at the Abbossey Okai Mosque in Accra at 1200 hours, a statement from the Presidency said on Tuesday. "The service is on the theme: "Uniting Ghana Through Christ." "The interdenominational service would take place on Sunday February 1 at the Independence square at 1400 hours. "The statement reminded the general public that political party colours would not be allowed at the event."

The handling of religious and moral matters becomes very tricky when dealing with a large number of people and in this instance the about 22 million Ghanaians, who profess all kinds of faiths. There are the witches' and wizards' conclaves that would see the observation of the prayer and thanksgiving day as an attempt to assail their fortresses just as the man possessed by demons shouted at Jesus Christ and demanded to know whether he had come to destroy them ahead of time. These witches and wizards must have started preparations either to counteract or reduce the effect the day of prayer and thanksgiving would have on them and by extension on the whole populace. It, therefore, behooves all men of God to precede the day with fasting, because the battle is not against flesh and blood but against powers; principalities and spiritual wickedness in high places, as the Scripture teaches.

The next group of people that would have to be taken care of are the free thinkers. This group do not believe anything beyond what the five senses can perceive. To them man's destiny is in his own hands. He determines his own fate and there is no God anywhere, who directs the affairs of men. Indeed some claim that it was men that created God and not the other way round. They posit that men in their inability to understand the mechanisms at play in their environment, found a way out of their bewilderment by attributing everything they did not understand to a superior being.

Some of these free thinkers go to the extent of propounding that "if indeed there was a God somewhere, he or she would be too busy attending to more pressing things in the universe rather than waste his or her time on men, who are mere dust and products of a small planet in a small solar system compared to others elsewhere." The tirade or harangue of this group should be countered with cogent argument to the effect that any serious God would be interested in everything that belonged to him or her since it is the little things that aggregate to become big. The saying "little drops of water make the mighty ocean" is germane here.

The next group is made up of those, who have belief in one kind of superior being or the other. This group are allies and what need to be done is to get them to join the gospel train. They should be invited to get on board.

A story is told of an Editor who told his colleagues long before Election 2008 that he had edited a story in his dream in early September 2008 in which Prof Mills was referred to as the "President-Elect" and, therefore, posited that since his dreams normally came to pass, Prof. Mills was going to be the next President of Ghana. Indeed, many men and women of God granted interviews to journalists and were positively sure that Prof. Mills was going to be the next President. Some went to the extent to predict that Election 2008 would be a long-drawn contest but at the end Prof Mills was going to emerge victorious. All this should tell all men something - that there is someone, somewhere in the universe, who is very much interested in the affairs of men on a planet called Earth. He or She reveals things to men and women long before they happen.

Thus President Mills' call for the observation of a day of prayer and thanksgiving is in the right direction and all Ghanaians should embrace it and participate fully. Indeed the time to be used to thank God would be time profitably applied. Ghana our Motherland, would reap the benefits in the not too distant future.