MANY people are anxious about the state of the UK and the problems we face, so it’s encouraging to remember we have successfully come through worse in the past. 70 years ago we actually came close to national annihilation and survived!

In May 1940, Germany invaded France and the only port from which to evacuate the British Army was Dunkirk where they were trapped against the sea. Our troops were encircled and the position was so serious it was reckoned that only 20,000 would be rescued. Almost the entire British Army was about to perish. There was no human solution to this crisis. There was no America to help, and no United nations. The UK stood totally alone. The end of the British way of life had come, or so it appeared.

In desperation King George VI, called for a National Day of Prayer to be held on May 26. In a national broadcast he called on the people of the UK to pray for divine intervention. Together with members of the Cabinet, the King attended Westminster Abbey, whilst literally millions of people across the British Isles queued to get into churches pleading for help.

What happened next was the strangest deliverance ever to occur in the history of any nation with two peculiar phenomena following this Day of Prayer. The first was a great storm which broke out over the area on May 28, hindering the assault of the German airforce and the second was the great calm which settled on the English Channel the likes of which hadn’t occurred for decades. This calm enabled an armada of boats to rescue 335,000 men. Four years later this deliverance further meant that Britain was able to provide a ‘launch pad’ for the liberation of Europe. If the British Army had been destroyed at Dunkirk the UK would have been occupied and the liberation of Europe would never have happened. The violent storm and Channel calm immediately following this Day of Prayer made possible what historians call ‘the miracle of Dunkirk’.

During the war there were so many examples of divine help at crucial moments that in October 1942 Churchill actually commented: “I sometimes have a feeling of interference. I have a feeling sometimes that a guiding hand has interfered. I have a feeling that we have a guardian because we have a great cause and we shall have that guardian so long as we serve that cause faithfully”.

Rather than fear for the future of our country let us be encouraged by these events of the past. Today we face numerous social, economic and political problems but they are as nothing compared to what we have successfully overcome before.

REV J WILLANS, Clayhill Rd, Leigh.