Prayer has always been a bit of a challenge for me. I am not practised in the rhythm of prayer. But as I have reached more senior years and have often been wakeful for a short time in the early hours of the morning, just before first light, I have found that this quiet time of the day when my mind is more relaxed and perhaps has processed the other matters that has occupied it, that this is a good time to reflect and pray. It is also the time when I sometimes have a flow of ideas too. If I remember them in the morning, well that is another matter! Jesus needed time in prayer and his disciples would have regularly witnessed Him going to the garden, mountain or quiet place alone to be with his Father. Prayer and being with Father God was part of His rhythm of life. This led to the disciples to ask Him to teach them how to pray.
So, it was with great interest that I read about Richard Gamble, who is planning for and has been awarded planning permission for an enormous Christian prayer monument, taking the shape of a continuous loop known as the Mobius strip. The Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer will be more than twice the size of the Anthony Gormley, Angel of the North sculpture. It is to be built on the outskirts of Birmingham, constructed using a million bricks, each representing an answered prayer from a member of the public. The Eternal Wall of Answered prayer will have three aims: to encourage prayer, to proclaim Jesus for the country and to preserve the Christian heritage of the nation. The site will also have a visitor centre, café and bookshop for an estimated 3,000 visitors a year, who will be able to use an app to access the database, for the stories of hope of a million people whose prayers were answered.
The aim of the Eternal Wall is to make hope visible to the nation, to be a monument of remembrance to our faithful God who hears and answers prayer, as was Joshua’s Gilgal stones. (Joshua 4)
“We’re trying to make the largest database of hope stories in the world visible and provoke a conversation about prayer. Everyone goes through storms in life, and hope is one of the greatest antidotes to anxiety and fear”. Richard Gamble
I am really pleased that this project is going ahead. In these challenging Covid-19 times we need these accounts of hope and answered prayer.
The Eternal Wall will stand for hundreds of years. They are looking for a million testimonies of answered prayer. (500 words) Eternalwall.org.uk/testimony
Joshua 4
19 The people came up out of the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and they encamped in Gilgal on the east border of Jericho. 20 And those twelve stones, which they took out of the Jordan, Joshua set up in Gilgal. 21 And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 22 then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ 23 For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, 24 so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty; that you may fear the Lord your God for ever.”
Jane Coates