Welcome to Women's World Day Of Prayer

May 2017

I’ve just come back from holiday – and very enjoyable it was too. The group consisted of a variety of people from around the UK, manly British, some Christian, many non-Christian.

Among the Christians, I was pleased that several had heard of WWDP and some had even taken part in services. One lady had been very involved in the music on a couple of occasions and told me about the problems she had had with teaching the congregation the hymns.

But there was something that disappointed me.

Whilst they all knew that WWDP is ecumenical, none had truly grasped the global nature of the World Day of Prayer. They realised that a different country wrote the service each year but had not appreciated the full implications of this – of the huge wave of prayer for and with that country circling the globe through a period of more than 36 hours.

In last year’s Together in Prayer, we read about Colden Common in Hampshire: at the beginning of the service there each year a globe is slowly rotated as a voice explains ‘the wave of prayer’. Then at the end, the congregation reflects in silence whilst the church is lit solely by the lights from the globe and the WWDP candle.

This seems a wonderful way of getting across to all present the global nature of World Day of Prayer. Maybe we could do
something similar in all our services?

Elizabeth Burroughs
Chairperson

National Committee for England,
Wales & Northern Ireland