Three names, two domains, and about a year of adding one more thing to my morning.
It started as a place to write my prayers down. That was the whole idea. A Python app called Prayer List. I wanted my prayers out of my head and onto a page, in a list I could actually pray through. Physical written prayer cards are nice, but they reside in one place. If I am away from home, I wanted my prayer cards to be accessible to me wherever I am.
Then it became Daily Prayer Cards. Now it’s Morning Selah, and it does a good deal more than hold a list.
The first real addition was the Claude API. I wired it in so each card could generate a prayer of its own. The cards were the people and groups I actually pray for: myself, my wife, my family, my Bible study group, my step group at Regen, and later the group my wife and I attend called Impact. I added a card for the attributes of God and gave that one AI generation too. Then a praise card. Then a card for answered prayer. When a request is answered, it moves there on its own.
Four kinds of card ended up existing. A personal card. A rotational card, which assigns a request or a person to a particular day of the week, so that each day you’re praying for that day’s requests. A weekly card. And a worship card. Any of them will generate a prayer, and there’s a button that generates prayers for all of them at once, attributes of God included.
The part I use the most is quieter than any of that. When you pray a request, it grays out. Pray every request on a card and the card itself grays out with a line through it. The next morning it all resets.
Prayed · 6:14 AM
Pray every request on a card and the card itself grays out with a line through it.
‖
Selah
Then I added users. Then an administration email, so if somebody forgot a password they could contact me and I could change it. Then invite codes, one use only, so I could control who got in. I put my own API key in so that my first users could use every AI feature in the app without it costing them anything.
Around then I moved it off a subdomain of graceplanet.com and gave it its own home at dailyprayercards.com.
Somewhere in there it stopped being a prayer tool.
I wanted the whole morning in one place.
I started with a devotional, something in the neighborhood of Daily Bread or New Morning Mercies, built on a verse or two. Then daily Bible readings, using the NIV Daily Scripture Reading Plan: an Old Testament passage, a New Testament passage, and either Psalms or Proverbs.
I read along with Tim Wildsmith’s podcast, Daily Scripture Reading with Tim Wildsmith, and he reads the NIV, which is what pushed me toward the translations you have to pay for. I signed up for the ESV.org API, then another one that carries the NIV, the CSB, and some others, and put translation selection into a user’s settings.
The setting I like most is the one that hides verse references. Turn it on and the reading is a paragraph. No numbers, no superscripts, nothing to catch your eye and pull it off the sentence.
Then I had the app scrape my own commentary from newmorningmercies.com, the notes I write each day on those same passages, so you can do the reading and then read the commentary without going anywhere.
The last thing was a button that opens a worship song on YouTube. The playlist runs about ninety songs, so it’s three months before you hear one twice. You click it, and there’s a new song waiting.
‖
Selah
The final change was the name, and a domain to go with it. Morning, because it’s something you do regularly. Selah, because it means a pause. A time to step out of your daily schedule and honor the Lord.
Morning, because it’s something you do regularly. Selah, because it means pause.
I’ve used this app for a long time now. It has been a fulfilling project and a helpful one, and my hope is that some others find interest in it and find it useful.
The app is at morningselah.com/about, where I’ve written up what it does and how to get in. Come see what your own morning could look like.