WEEK 2: PREPARING FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Welcome to Week 2 in our Preparing for the Holidays series. If you’d like to read the introduction to the series, read Start Here: Preparing for the Holidays. Click here for Week 1.
Each week we’ll focus on two actions to center as we pray. Throughout this series, we’ll also focus on a passage from Colossians 3:12-17. You can read it in full at the end of the post.
Awareness + Imagination
Stories of God’s presence with His people are threaded throughout all of Scripture, ultimately evidenced through Jesus, the Son of God, becoming human and dwelling with people and also through the Holy Spirit, sent by Jesus to dwell within us.
We read declarations of God’s presence with us in 2 Kings 6 with Elisha the prophet or in Genesis 16 with Hagar or in Exodus when we read about God being with the Israelites in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. Repeatedly we are encouraged by the reality that God is very, very present. So, I invite us to ask the question - where is God at work? Not “is God at work?”, but rather, where? How is He moving in your midst? And, let’s pray for curiosity as we wonder - how might He be inviting you, me, us to join in His good work in our specific contexts?
Here are some questions to consider:
Where is God at work and how we may be invited to join?
What is God doing within the communities you’ll engage with this holiday season?
Let’s seek the Spirit to make us more aware of His presence and let’s pray for a holy imagination. What could future gatherings with friends, family, etc look like?
Where are there opportunities to share the Gospel?
How might God seek to be glorified? How might you participate?
Read below or listen to this passage and meditate on it.
“Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of Christ, to which you were also called in one body, rule your hearts. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell richly among you, in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
