Brother Eddie Cantrell with Trenton First Baptist Church provided the morning devotion for the Georgia Senate as Chaplin of the Day in June.
Cantrell said it began with a call from Senator Jeff Mullis about three days after the election was over. Mullis asked Cantrell if he would come to the capital to give a brief devotion for Georgia Senators.
“If someone asks me, then I go if I can,” Cantrell said of being asked to speak to the Georgia Senate. “I don’t know why he asked me, but I am grateful he did.”
Cantrell apologized to the Senate, saying when he got the invitation he thought of them as politicians and as Democrat or Republican, but he decided to go down the list of names of the Georgia Senators and pray for them. It was not enough and Cantrell asked God how he could do better. He was able to pull up 53 of the 56 bios and read all of them. He even read part of a book called, “Getting Butter from a Duck” by Senator Ed Harbison. Cantrell was able to call names of some of the Senators and ways that he could relate to them.
Cantrell combined his belief in God and prayer, emotion, humor, and love in addressing Senators and you can watch his full devotion in the Georgia Senate in the link below.
“I was very honored, very humbled, but the lesson I learned was when you take time to get to know people, the more you realize you have in common and the less you focus on the differences,” Cantrell said.
Mullis said usually Chaplain of the Day is first-come, first-serve, but he got to have his choice of Pastor and he and Brother Eddie have become friends over the years. When Mullis was able to secure a date, he asked Brother Eddie to be Chaplain of the Day, or “Preacher of the Day” because “that’s what Brother Eddie did”.
“He did a great job,” Mullis said of Cantrell, “and left everyone in amazement.”
