Brother, Can You Spare a Minute?

The 1930s gave us a decade of the worst depression this country has ever experienced. Most of us are too young to remember The Great Depression, but all of us have heard stories about the joblessness, the homelessness, and the soup lines that defined that period of American history. Middle-class families were suddenly plunged into poverty and were destined to roam the country looking for work.

During the 1930s, the song Brother, Can you Spare a Dime? became an instant hit because it highlighted the plight of the middle-class American who begged on the streets in order to put a little food into his stomach. The newly created class of Hobos hopped off trains and knocked on people’s kitchen doors asking for whatever the housewife could spare. Even then a dime wasn’t much, but for those in need it just might make the difference between starvation and survival.

Eighty years later we find ourselves living in the twenty-first century version of the great depression. Americans are losing their jobs, their homes, and their futures at a rate that far exceeds anything we would have imagined only five years ago. In the 2012 remake, the soup lines are gone and families who have lost their homes and jobs are not begging on the streets; they are barely scraping by on a government issued check, but like their 1930s counterparts, they have little hope for the future.

However, the pleas for money have not disappeared. In the 2012 remake virtually all Americans who have access to a telephone, the Internet, or the U.S. mails are inundated daily with requests for money. We are told that if we can get ten dollars to some organization or another within the next 24 hours, they can stop a certain piece of legislation from being passed, or they can get a particular political candidate elected or defeated, as the case may be. The trick is that the money must be delivered in a specific minimum amount (of course, more is always better, but the minimum will do) and it must be delivered within a specific short period of time.

Today, I join the ranks of those who are asking Americans to give so that our country can be saved. However, I am not asking you to give money to turn this country around. My question is this: Brother, can you spare a minute? If you are willing to donate a minute to save our nation, here is how your minute will be used:

Your minute will be bundled with the minutes of tens of thousands of other Americans who have become a part of the If My People, 2012 call to action that is taking place right now and will continue through the election on November 6. However, please do not send your minute to me—do not even send your minute to Joel Rosenberg, who is one of the organizers of the event. Send your minute directly to God. Here is the way it works:

Many thousands of Americans are setting aside one minute every evening from now through the election to pray for our country as instructed in II Chronicles 7:14, If my people, which are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and search for me, and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear them from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land.

The event calls for us to set aside one minute every evening so that we will all be praying at exactly the same time. Those on Eastern Standard Time pray at 9:00 P.M., those on Central Standard Time pray at 8:00 P.M., those on Mountain Standard Time pray at 7:00 P.M., and those on Pacific Standard Time pray at 6:00 P.M.  We are to ask God to forgive our sins both individually and as a country, to ask Him to heal our land, and to ask Him to send revival to our nation. We are also to pray for the upcoming election. This idea is so simple that everyone can take part. Even a child as young as three years old can put his little hands together and ask God to heal our land.

I hope that you and your family will join us in this effort. I believe that it is a great privilege to live in a nation where we can participate in events such as this one, and I am honored to be able to send my minute bundled together with those countless other minutes so that our land can be healed.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. Her newest novel, The Chosen, is available on Kindle and  in paperback. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.