Received: 2025-01-17 19:21:36

My prayer request is For health and safety and for homeless people to get housing... and praise the lord for myself finding housing after trying for 14 months

“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” (Annie Dillard)

From the moment our bodies awaken, our eyes begin to open, and we enter into the ordinary wonder of a brand new day.

What do you do with the first few moments of your day? Does what comes ‘first’ really matter?

We gather as the church on the first day of the week and we worship together, because we believe it forms us. And it does.

But the rituals of our ordinary days form us so much more. The day in, day out patterns of where we point our eyes, our hearts. Our lives and our loves are shaped by what we do again and again.

From the very first moments of your day, your life is being formed; you are being formed.

When you awake, do you breathe in the wonder of the life that courses through your veins? Or do you rehearse with worry and anxiety the coming events of the day?

Do you pause in the stillness and tune your heart to God? Or do you launch headfirst into the mad rush of ‘things to be done’ and ‘hills to be climbed’?

Do you reach for a Bible to encounter the presence of God? Or for your phone, and its endless stream of entertainment, stimulation, information.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. It is shaping who you become, whether you want it to or not. What will you put first?

Contemplations
First Things First

Ready for what's next?

Reflection
Examen | Last Week

This is a practice of looking backwards and trying to notice where God was at work in the past, in order to more easily spot and open up to where God is at work in our present moments. Since the regular noise of life tends to drown out that awareness. 

Reflection
The Names of God

Whether you were named after a person of significance, or because of the meaning of your name, or just because your parents liked it, our names have meaning to us. They represent who we are. And that can be even more true when it comes to our names for God. The Bible is full of interesting names given to God... 

Contemplations
Imaginative Prayer | Wounded Healer

I want to invite you to close your eyes and picture your hurt – the ways you’ve experienced pain and hurt in the church, maybe generally or maybe very specifically or even recently – picture it as an actual wound on your body.