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A reflection and prayer to start the day with Canon Simon Doogan.

Good morning.

Bloodlands, the Northern Ireland set police drama prompted a number of relatives and friends farther afield to contact us recently. Recognising all the locations we had visited together, they felt the show a worthy addition to the new Irish-noir corpus. But they also felt it deserved to succeed,
because like the chief character in the story, it was another instance of Northern Ireland straining for something better.

Regrettably it wasn’t long before we had real footage from some real bloodlands following some well-publicised local disturbances.

Yes, we have new structures for airing our disagreements, but for our politicians and community leaders a worrying problem has violently presented itself.

As a person of faith, I’ve found myself asking: is this what happens when people, myself included, stop praying? Because through all the years I studied, worked and holidayed away from home, I would hear Northern Ireland being prayed for. Almost every Sunday, English, Welsh and Scottish voices would lift before God the people who spoke like me.

Reflecting on it now of course, the need to intercede, work and strain for something better has never gone away. Honouring God for answered prayers and those who offered them in the past would be a good place to restart. But not out of place too just now, is sorrow and a touch of shame – in the spirit of Psalm 122’s ancient prayer for Jerusalem:

So we lift before you again Lord,
those places where brokenness makes for bitterness,
where deprivation makes for desperation
and where fear makes for fighting.
Peace be within your walls and, security within your towers
for the sake of my relatives and friends and the house of the Lord our God.
Amen