ABOUT THE AUTHORS
WILLA KANE
Willa is a trustee of the American Anglican Council, a founding member of Holy Trinity Anglican Church and New City Fellows in Raleigh, NC, and a board member for the ministries of Anne Graham Lotz. A Bible teacher and community volunteer, she and her husband, John, have four married children and twelve grandchildren.
SALLY BREEDLOVE
Sally is the author of Choosing Rest and one of the authors of The Shame Exchange. She co-founded JourneyMates and is the associate director of Selah-Anglican, a spiritual direction training program. She is the mother of five children and grandmother to sixteen in the life she shares with her husband, Steve.
MADISON PERRY
Madison is the executive director of the North Carolina Study Center. He is also an ordained priest in the Diocese of the Carolinas (ACNA). Madison and his wife, Pamela, live in Durham, NC, and have six children.
ALYSIA YATES
Alysia is a writer, editor, and mother of four. She earned her graduate degree in Church History and works as the Associate Director for Ministry and Hospitality at the Study Center at State. She lives with her husband, John, and family in Raleigh, NC.
ABOUT THE SERIES
Time tells a story. And the way we tell time inscribes that story in us.
The Eighth Day Prayers series is an invitation to a new way of keeping time, one rooted in the rhythm of creation that nonetheless draws us on toward new creation. In so many ways we have lost our ability to keep time. We constantly think about what needs to be done, but God invites us into a different understanding of time. The liturgical calendar teaches us to live in God’s seasons, rather than by the clock, and takes us on a year-long journey. When we follow the liturgical from Advent to Ordinary Time, we remember the milestones of our faith: our longing for God to intervene in the broken world; the birth of Christ and his life of ministry on earth; Christ's death for us and the resurrection by which death was defeated; and finally, what it means to live faithfully on his earth until Christ comes again and brings us into his kingdom. Knowing that bigger story with our hearts’ imagination shapes our prayers and our thoughts. We can begin to see each day as a step on this journey to the coming kingdom.
HOW THE SERIES WAS CREATED
EIGHTH DAY PRAYERS began with a simple idea that would have been impossible to execute without the enlivening help of the Holy Spirit.
When the world shut down from the COVID pandemic, Sally Breedlove asked the Lord to “show her how to love in this time.” Just a few miles away, Willa Kane received a text from a dear friend with an idea to encourage people all over the world to pray at the same time every night as a way to bring peace to one another during a season of isolation.
Willa reached out to Sally and other friends who had influence in different spheres of ministry, and together they forged a plan to establish a time for prayer at 8:00 pm every night for 8 minutes. In 2020 our world was in a crisis of fear, isolation, and confusion, so how could a dream that big come into being?
The Eighth Day Prayer team did the simple things. They named and set up a website and posted daily invitations to pray. From the beginning they realized prayer that flowed from reflection on Scripture had the power to draw people to the heart of God. They wrote the first 150 or so calls to prayer, and a growing number of people joined in online. Out of that online worldwide community of over fourteen thousand people, the idea of a book began to emerge. And more people began to help with this project.
Psalm 110:3 tells us that God’s people volunteer or offer themselves freely on the day of God’s power. In the creation of Eighth Day Prayers, the triune God has indeed been our King, and his people have freely offered themselves in service. We are grateful.