Prayers

Prayers and Prayer reflections

Peace Candle

A Candle for Peace –  Each Sunday morning we light a candle for Peace.

In 1986 at the conclusion of a service in an Orthodox Church in Russia, an old woman thrust a three rouble note into the hands of a visiting minister from the First Presbyterian Church in York, Pennsylvania, USA.  She asked him to use the money to light a candle at every service in his church as a symbol of peace.

Not only did this minister take up the old woman’s request, he passed the idea on to a hundred other churches with the request that they do likewise.

In 1988 the story along with a small candle came to our church from St Matthews Church, Wigmore, Kent via Cherry Hinton United Reformed Church, Cambridge.  

Before each Sunday service we light the candle in prayer for peace.

The devotion of one old woman,        a precious three rouble note with an urgent request to pray for peace in 1986,       and the faith and belief of a minister of God,         together with the willingness of many individual worshippers to pray for peace  reminds of the power of prayer.  

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. 

The prayer for peace continues to be needed as urgently as then.