National Holidays!

The Prague National Museum, taken during a stunning sunset (which you can just about see in the windows) yesterday.

The 5th and 6th July are national holidays in the Czech Republic.  On Friday I still had class and the 6th was a Saturday so I'm not really sure how they are celebrated, except there were a few more Czech flags around the place.

July 5th is a day when Saints Cyril and Methodius are celebrated.  They were Greek brothers who were sent to this part of Europe in the 9th Century when the people of the region asked to hear the truth of the Gospel in their own language.  So Cyril and Methodius came and invented an alphabet (the Cyrillic alphabet!) and shared the Gospel.  

June 6th is Jan Hus day.  Above is his statue in the centre of Prague, I probably have better photos somewhere on this hard drive but for now this quick snap taken a couple of days ago will have to suffice!

Jan Hus was a Czech priest who is considered the first reformer of the church, being on the scene a century before Luther.  Jan Hus was a great preacher and called for reformation in the Catholic church.  On July 6th 1415 he was burnt at the stake by the Catholic church for being a heretic.  

In my Czech class the teacher was asked what these men were famous for and he couldn't really give an answer, except that Jan Hus also reformed the Czech language, introducing all the little accents above letters.  

This country has such a glorious and rich history of the Gospel, dating back centuries.  Prague is called the City of One Hundred Spires (although the actual count is probably more like five hundred).  They have days to celebrate the great Christians of the past.  And yet there are young people living here, in the most atheistic country in Europe, who have never heard the Gospel.

I'm praying that God would yet again raise up people in this nation who will proclaim the true Gospel, that people would respond to it, and that it would transform this land.