January Twenty-Twenty

Show us how to love our walk and to give thanks for each step.

Give us compassion for all those who walk beside us, and

 help us remember everyone who taught us how to walk.

Let wisdom be the gift on this walk so that we can show others how to follow this path.

You can always raise up laborers for your harvest of love; let us be sowers with faithful steps and boundless seeds so that love can flourish around us. Amen.

-Becca Stevens, Love Heals

Lord, you have made us in Your image.

Teach us to see this day, every person we meet, 

whether on the streets or in the mirror, as Your incarnate face. 

All our journeys begin and end with You- 

now we need to learn how to travel close to You on our way home.

Helps us seek and knock to find You wherever we are.

Let us feel the cloud of witnesses that assures us of Your guiding hand. 

Whether we lie down in green pastures or walk in the valley of the shadow of death, 

let us feel You leading us and holding us fast. Amen.

-Becca Stevens, Love Heals

The artist is always the contemplative—the one who sees what is there. The uninhibited three-year-old, stopping with enthralled gaze to watch an insect, or some activity in the street, is also a contemplative. If we could recover that lost capacity to look, which we all once had, we might be able to penetrate to the heart of matters.

–Elizabeth O’Connor

Prepare me, dear Lord, to start this day again.

I am ready to keep climbing even through the mountain is steep.

I am willing to keep searching even through the fog is thick.

I am able to keep praying even through my words sound hollow.

Take these offerings, and use them to open my heart to a new song.

Remove from me all that is keeping me unwilling or unable to sing so that I can praise the wonder of clouds parting and Love revealed. Amen.

-Becca Stevens, Love Heals

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.  -Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Hold me in your embrace, Lord;

Make me transparent in your light.

Grant me awareness; keep

My gratitude fresh each day.

Let my song give blessing and insight

To those who can’t see for themselves.

And let your compassion always

Shine forth from the depths of my heart.

–Stephen Mitchell, excerpt from “Psalm 40”, A Book of Psalms: Selected and Adapted from the Hebrew

and to top it off: 

some good goals scored this month for Taylor on his soccer team...