‘Deliver us from evil’, we ask in the Lord’s Prayer, and in the season of Lent our plea is especially that God will help us to avoid temptation or falling into error. Yet do we mean it? We may think so, but if we habitually put ourselves into situations where temptation is likely to prove hard to resist, or that bring out the worst in us, then it’s more than likely we will succumb. That’s the theme of the following short prayer from my The Animal Lovers’ Daily Prayer Book, first printed in The Little Book of Wild Animal Prayers.
Save me, Lord, from courting disaster –
from praying ‘deliver me from evil’
only to put myself in harm’s way.
Remind me that for you to play your part,
I must play mine.
Amen.