Four days after he became prime minister in May 1940, Winston Churchill approved a National Day of Prayer. Roused by news of the German onslaught against British forces in Belgium and France, people throughout Britain flocked to their local churches and chapels to pray. Five days later, news reached the country of the remarkable evacuation of the British army from Dunkirk. As further details emerged, it became apparent that a whole series of ‘miracles’ had been enacted.¹

Rocky Mountain locusts

There is an equally outstanding story that is not nearly so familiar - one of divine intervention relating to an earlier Day of Prayer, across the Atlantic Ocean.²

A giant plague of starving Rocky Mountain locusts (in reality grasshoppers) descended on swathes of Minnesota in 1873, destroying wheat, oat, corn and barley fields. Grasshopper plagues had occurred before, but this one was much bigger. Although farmers did all in their power to destroy the insects’ eggs, 1874 proved even worse than the previous year. 1875 was worse still, as again was 1876, in which year grasshoppers visited 40 Minnesota counties and destroyed half-a-million acres of crops.

Countering the plague

There were no pesticides to deal with the problem, which had now become a major crisis across the state. The grasshoppers would completely darken the midday sky as they swooped in and devoured acre after acre of well-tended crop. Minnesota grasshoppers. @Jacoby's Art GalleryThey even attacked cattle, many of which died of blood poisoning. 

The farmers beat the grasshoppers with flails. They raised birds and chickens to eat the pests. They dug ditches that they hoped the grasshoppers would be unable to jump over. Many made specially created hopper-dozers, which trapped the insects against metal boards coated in tar. Other farmers collected the grasshoppers in large burlap bags, one farmer gathering as many as 18 bushels (100,000 insects per bushel) from a ten-acre field.

Devastation on communities

As the spring of 1877 advanced, the situation was looking desperate. Grasshopper swarms now covered two-thirds of Minnesota. Many farmers were reduced to paupery and some to virtual starvation. City and town-dwellers were equally affected, for business was at an all-time low, and few had any money to buy goods. What’s more, most farmers had no insurance to cover losses, nor any savings to help in times of disaster.

The proud Minnesotans were brought to the very end of themselves before they were in a position to seriously consider one remaining option – petitioning the state governor to call a state-wide Day of Prayer. Such was their desperation that they at last resolved to take this path.

Calling a Day of Prayer

The governor, John Pillsbury, readily granted their request, himself at pains to find a way out of the crisis. Thursday, 26th April 1877 was officially set as a day of fasting, humility and prayer, with every man, woman and child urged to beseech God to prevent the impending scourge.

Many mocked the decision, certain it would achieve no good. One group, the Liberal League, claimed it insulted the intelligence of Minnesotans! On the other hand, a small congregation of Catholics from Cold Spring pledged that if God would banish the grasshoppers from their midst, they would erect a chapel to God and give thanks there.

Thursday 26th April 1877

As the Day of Prayer approached, the rest of the nation watched curiously. Newspapers from as far away as Chicago, Boston and even Atlanta sent reporters to cover the story. Many wrote cynical or tongue-in-cheek briefings, scoffing at the idea of imploring the Divine to help with wholly practical concerns.

Thursday, April 26th arrived. A hush fell over the state. Shops were closed, streets were deserted. Bars, theatres and restaurants were empty. Churches, on the other hand, were packed – filled with people of contrite heart, acknowledging their utter powerlessness at dealing with the calamity that had overtaken them, and willing at long last to bow the knee and call on Almighty God to come to their rescue.

Climactic conundrum

Interestingly, the climate across Minnesota on the Day of Prayer was unusually warm and sunny for a spring day in the far north. It was indeed a perfect day for grasshopper eggs to hatch and for little larvae to come wiggling to life. And that’s what happened, by the trillion.

Another unusual meteorological phenomenon occurred late that night. It began to rain; and with it, the wind shifted from south to north. The rain changed to sleet and then to snow. The snow and freezing temperatures continued for two full days, being followed on the third by a fully-fledged blizzard sweeping down from Canada. When it all finally cleared, entomologists found that billions of little grasshoppers had been frozen to death shortly after hatching.

What’s more, the few eggs that did hatch issued grasshoppers which mysteriously rose and flew away. No eggs were reported to have been deposited in Minnesota that summer.

Minnesotan miracle

Minnesotan wheat fields © kweqiop Flickr.jpgCould it all have been a bizarre coincidence? Yet it was pointed out that the likes of this had never occurred during all the preceding months and years of grasshopper plagues. That it should begin to happen the very day the people called on God was seen as a miracle of biblical proportions. In addition, it normally takes an area subject to a grasshopper plague several years to recover from the recurring crop damage. The harvest across Minnesota that year, on the contrary, was the most bountiful known in the state’s history; never had the fields yielded so many bushels of wheat, corn and small grains!

True to their promise, the believers in Cold Spring built their ‘Grasshopper Chapel’ close to the town, and many a prayer of thanksgiving and praise ascended from that humble wooden sanctuary. There is no recorded response to these events by the Liberal League. It was many years before swarms of grasshoppers returned to Minnesota, and never to the devastating effect of the mid-1870s. In fact, the Rocky Mountain locust suddenly, and staggeringly, became extinct some years later.

A summons to our nation

The story of Minnesota’s Day of Prayer serves as an inspiration and encouragement to believers everywhere that God indeed hears our prayers, and that we should never consider any problem too big (or small) for our heavenly Father to deal with (Jer 32:17, 1 Pet 5:7).

But the story, along with those National Days of Prayer from wartime Britain, should also serve as a wake-up call to our own nation, which, like the rest of the world, has been facing a different type of plague over the past year. It is a summons to the people of the United Kingdom to acknowledge God in the affairs of our country, to turn to him in humility, and to beseech him to have mercy on our sin-soaked land (Ps 51, 2 Chron 20:5-12).

Endnotes

1. Evan Miller, ‘The Four Miracles of Dunkirk’ 
2. My primary source is the first chapter of Dale Gilmore, ‘Minnesota: The Revival State: Moves of God 1860-1960’, Lulu Publishing 2020. Additional information was gleaned from MNOPEDIA  and www.fairmont.org