A couple years ago, I wrote a guest post for Good Letters blog in the months following the Newtown school shooting and the Boston bombs. You can read that post here: "Deliver Us From Evil." If you haven't read it, this post may not make much sense, so if you have the time, I encourage you to click over and then come back.
That post at Good Letters has now been on my mind in the days following the Charleston shooting, because last week I realized I'd gotten out of the habit of that specific prayer: a prayer for deliverance from evil on behalf of this country, this world. In that post I stated that I was setting my alarm for a certain time each morning and would pause at the ring to say a prayer of corporate protection, adding my small prayer to all the prayers.
I’ve set the alarm on my phone to go off thirty minutes after I usually get up. It’s set to repeat daily. When it goes off with its blues guitar sound, I am praying for the safety of this country, our schools, skies, and public places, for the safety of the world, for protection of the innocents.
I had kept the practice going for a long time, but more and more often I turned off the alarm because of a work conference call, or travel, or any number of legitimate – or not so legitimate – excuses, until one day after turning it off, I forgot to turn it back on.
With sorrow, the alarm is now back on.
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[Photo: taken of Boston Harbor.]