Beneath the John Hopkins Hospital’s historic dome in Baltimore, MD stands a 10-and-a-half-foot marble statue of Jesus.  Many touch his feet as they walk by or leave notes of prayers since 1896.  There’s a nice article about the history of the statue here.

But I recently came across another article in which a grad student analyzed the prayers left at at the feet of the statue between 1999-2005.

Here’s a snippit:

I analyzed the prayers this woman and hundreds like her wrote in prayer books at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital between 1999 and 2005. Although the statue of Jesus Christ has stood in the hospital since 1896, it was not until the early 1990s that people began to leave prayers written on napkins, scraps of paper, and the back of visitor’s badges and business cards at the statue’s base.

So that the prayers were not lost, hospital chaplains placed a blank book on a stand by the statue that is filled with prayers every two to three months. Anyone entering or leaving the hospital can write in the prayer book and/or read the prayers other people have written. People write prayers longhand, filling the pages with words and drawings. Some leave photographs, children’s drawings, flowers, and coins at the statue.

Most of the prayers penned in these books are improvised, not the Lord’s Prayer, prayers to Saint Jude or other standards. Most who write pray for themselves and/or their families or close friends. They write prayers to thank God, to make requests of God, or to both thank and petition God.

Full Article