John Willans on the National Day of Prayer at the time of Dunkirk
May / June sees the 75th anniversary of Dunkirk.
When Britain was close to defeat during WWII, and the entire British Army was trapped at the port on the coast of France, in desperation George VI called for a National Day of Prayer to be held on 26 May 1940.
In a broadcast he instructed the people of the UK to turn back to God in a spirit of repentance and plead for divine help. Millions of people across the British Isles flocked into churches praying for deliverance and the photograph shows the extraordinary scene outside Westminster Abbey as people queued for prayer.
God’s answer
Two events immediately followed. Firstly, a violent storm arose over the Dunkirk region, grounding the Luftwaffe which had been killing thousands on the beaches. And then secondly, a great calm descended on the Channel, the like of which hadn’t been seen for a generation, which allowed hundreds of tiny boats to sail across and rescue 335,000 soldiers. This was ten times greater than the estimated 20–30,000 troops it was hoped to evacuate. From then on people referred to what happened as ‘the miracle of Dunkirk’. Sunday 9 June was officially appointed as a Day of National Thanksgiving.
A full account of this can be read in We Have a Guardian by W.B. Grant, Covenant Publishing Company, available in print or Kindle format.
National Days of Prayer were held at critical times throughout the war. After each one, it seems God responded with his blessing and protection. Looking back, the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr H.A. Wilson wrote: ‘If ever a great nation was on the point of supreme and final disaster, and yet was saved and reinstated it was ourselves… it does not require an exceptionally religious mind to detect in all this the hand of God.’
Then and now
But now, 75 years later, something has gone very wrong with our country. Nationally we have been reduced to a position of weakness in an increasingly hostile world, we experienced apocalyptic flooding during the winter of 2014. We have a national debt of over a trillion pounds and the fallout from the referendum on Scottish Independence in September 2014 has created numerous constitutional problems. People are asking ‘what is happening to our nation?’ ‘What has gone wrong?’
The answer is not hard to find. Psalm 107.34 warns: ‘a fruitful nation will become impoverished because of the wickedness of its people’ and Proverbs 14.34 adds: ‘righteousness will exalt a nation, but wickedness will destroy a people’.
Sadly our nation has ignored and rejected the moral laws of God which are clearly written in Scripture for all to see. Without God’s blessing of protection upon us, we are no longer shielded from evil and disaster.
May we, like the wartime generation before us, turn to God in a true spirit of repentance and plead for divine help for our country. In 2 Chronicles 7.14 God promises: ‘If people humble themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and forgive their sin and heal their land’. If our nation once again sought God’s help as it did during wartime, now, just as then, miracles of blessing and protection would begin to happen.
