Christian prayer and meditation app Hallow has just celebrated the milestone achievement of facilitating over 100 million prayers.
According to Fox News, Hallow – created by 29-year-old Alex Jones – has been downloaded over 3.75 million times from users in around 150 countries since it launched in 2018.
In a phone interview with Fox News Digital, Jones shared that he was inspired to create Hallow after experiencing the benefits of meditation using secular apps Headspace and Calm.
"I thought they were super helpful tools to learn meditation within the comfort of your own home," Jones told the outlet.
He also noted that despite having a strained relationship with Christianity, he would always think about God and Christianity when he meditated.
"Every time I would meditate, my mind would feel pulled toward something Christian. An image of the cross, or the Trinity, or the Holy Spirit, which I thought was very strange," Jones shared.
This prompted Jones to reach out to ministers and friends and family of faith to discuss the possibility of meditation being tied to Christianity.
"I would ask, 'Hey, is there any way there's some intersection here between this whole faith thing and this meditation thing?'" he said.
"They all laughed at me and said, 'Yeah, we've been doing it for about 2,000 years. You've probably heard about it. It's called prayer,'" Jones added.
It was then that Jones, leaning on his Catholic faith, decided to code and create the Catholic meditation and prayer app.
He chose the name Hallow – which means "to make holy" – after meditatively reading the Lord's Prayer.
"Our Father, hallowed be thy name," Jones said. "It just changed my life — it brought me to tears," he added.
"It brought me back to my faith. It changed everything about what I value and the most important part of who I am."
This revelation also led Jones to wonder, "Is God calling me to be holy? … Am I to be helping other people grow in virtue?"
Today, people from many different denominations worldwide use the app to guide them through their daily prayer rituals.
"We have users like me, who have young families, and teenagers who want to build habits, and we've got folks who are retirees or who are nearing the end of their life who are trying to use that time to dive deeper into their relationship with God," he said.
"God can reach out to everybody at any stage of their lives," Jones said.
The app also has prayers, meditations and reflections from prominent Christian celebrities like actor Mark Wahlberg, former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz.
Photo courtesy: Abby Dinosaur/Unsplash
Kayla Koslosky is the former Editor of ChristianHeadlines.com. She has B.A. degrees in English and History and previously wrote for and was the managing editor of the Yellow Jacket newspaper. She has also contributed to IBelieve.com and Crosswalk.com.
