I went to the Michigan Prayer Breakfast this morning. It was an interesting time. I am not normally into these civic religion events but this was a little different. It was the kind of event where the big players in town were in attendance and being the state capital we also had the Attorney General of Michigan, the state House Speaker, the State Senate majority leader and probably a dozen other state representatives. The prayers were focused on praying for the state of Michigan, the Big Three auto companies, that sort of thing.
The event is kind of two fold. The first part is the presentation of the Amy Award, a prize given out by the Amy Foundation which is a Lansing area foundation that seeks to promote "biblical truth reinforced with scripture in secular, non-religious publications". The winner this year of first prize (and $10,000!) was the Wall Street Journal's Tony Woodlief, for his essay OK, Virginia, There's No Santa Claus. But There Is God. Tony also has an interesting webpage.
The second part was an interesting speaker, Michael Franzese. He is widely known as a mobster who left the mafia when he was born again, and now does the speaking circuit and writes books. His talk was OK, I had a number of theological quibbles as always, but I really loved hearing about the way that God seeks and saves lost sinners. People who come to faith in adulthood often have interesting testimonies and people who are living lives in opposition to the Gospel have some of the most dramatic stories. When someone is a mobster, they certainly are not focused on God but God in the case of Michael Franzese was focused on him. Anyway, interesting speaker and a great testimony of the sovereignty of God in saving people in spite of their lack of seeking Him.
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