Somewhere between wondering whether Christians might pray more deliberately for the work of government and trying to make a year’s worth of devotionals readable on Instagram, I’ve found myself down a bit of a rabbit hole.
I’ve written before about an idea about praying for elected representatives, but that’s also led into a set of ideas beyond the people who hold office to the much wider work of government. Common Good wonders how might we pay more attention to the extraordinary variety of work involved in governing and serving the public? Not just politicians and headlines, but all those other things that keep our shared lives going, often without us giving them much thought.
I had in mind almanacs and whether there was a rhythm in the year. As the son of an Anglican vicar I had a good awareness of liturgical calendars. Though as we now hang out with non-denominational Vineyard types we don’t have much call for liturgy. And I hadn’t actually appreciated just how varied the world’s liturgical calendars are.
Anyway, I explored along those lines and settled on 52 weekly themes, which grew into 364 daily subjects, each with Scripture, a short reflection and five points for prayer.
With Advent approaching, and the start of a new devotional year on the horizon, I’ve been trying to get everything into shape for 2026/27. I’ll write a bit more about the hope behind this idea then but simply it’s to open up something of the wonder, love and appreciation God has for this enormous variety of people and work. And to allow something of that variety to breathe.
364 days of me and AI
There is no way that I could have made this on my own. Not remotely.
AI and I spent a great deal of time designing themes, choosing daily subjects and looking for suitable Bible passages. The Bible is so rich and varied on topics of governance and government that it was important to surface that variety, rather than lean on the same handful of verses about justice and leadership.
I was particularly excited to come across the Open Study Bible MCP, and then to meet David, its curator, at the London Missional.AI conference. The MCP gives AI tools access to biblical lexicons, study notes and cross-references, helping interrogate the words rather than simply accepting the first plausible-sounding connection.
Does that passage actually say what we’re claiming? Is there something better? Are we trying a bit too hard to make an ancient text address a modern government department? And, after all that, can we say something worthwhile in a short reflection and end with five things people might actually pray?
That represents an awful lot of prompting, questioning and iterating. These aren’t 364 reflections I wrote single-handedly, nor 364 responses to a one-line prompt. Those 364 days of material are the product of work supported by AI, with all the opportunities and limitations that implies. I don’t think using AI relieves me of responsibility for the passages we choose or what we say about them. Quite the opposite.
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