The Hundred-Year Watch at Herrnhut

On August 27, 1727, twenty-four men and twenty-four women in the small German village of Herrnhut made a quiet commitment. They divided the day into hourly slots so that someone would always be praying, every hour, without ceasing. What began as a single day of devotion continued unbroken for over one hundred years.

The Moravian community, led by Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, had been refugees — driven from their homes in Moravia and Bohemia for their faith. They knew what it meant to feel exposed, vulnerable, uncertain of what lay ahead. And yet rather than building higher walls, they built a prayer watch. Through harsh Saxon winters, through plagues and poverty, through the deaths of founders and the birth of new generations, someone was always awake, always lifting their eyes to the Lord.

The psalmist declares that the One who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Those Moravian believers understood something profound: their prayer vigil was not sustaining God's attention — it was responding to it. The Almighty was already keeping watch. He had been their shade at their right hand through every mile of exile, every sleepless night of uncertainty.

Their hundred-year prayer was an echo of an eternal reality. Long before anyone in Herrnhut knelt to pray, the Keeper of Israel was already wide awake, guarding their going out and their coming in, from that time forth and forevermore.