I love being snuggled up in my bed, under the warm duvet with the lovely soft cotton cover and it feels even more cosy when it is stormy weather outside. When I wake up early in the morning and I don’t feel rested enough to get up, I often read the day’s entry of the Northumbria Community’s Celtic Daily Prayer eBook in bed. Today’s reading included Luke 2:3-7 which ends with “there was no place for them in the inn”.  

I was suddenly struck by this sentence and it set my brain alight with thoughts and prayers: 

What if there had been no room at the inn for me? 

What, God forbid, if there will be no room at the inn for my children? 

What about those for whom there is no room and who have no homes to go to?  

Why is there not always room for those who do not fit the description? Those who do not look the right way or behave the right way or say the right things? 

What if it was different? 

I love flying into Dublin airport, looking out at the city from above and seeing it positioned so beautifully between Howth peninsula, Bray Head and the Dublin Mountains. It looks even better when the sun peeps out from behind the clouds and especially at dusk.  

What if there was room for everyone at the inn here in Dublin, here in Ireland? What if there was not only room but also employment and friends and community? 

No one will look after our city and country if we do not do it ourselves. Transformation will not take place unless we ask for it.  

O Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen on your walls; 

they will pray day and night, continually. 

Take no rest, all you who pray to the Lord. 

Give the Lord no rest until he completes his work, 

until he makes Jerusalem the pride of the earth. (Isaiah 62:6-7 NLT) 

In this Covid time it is so easy to batten down the hatches and to try to ride out the storm as best as I can without looking around me too much. But what if I spend just a little bit of that waiting time praying for something good to come out of this for Dublin, for Ireland, for all of us. 

I sense a call to prayer. Will you join me?  

Theme photo by LeeAnn Cline on Unsplash