One Word
This winter on The Daily Pattern we’re in a series called One Word. Each day we take one word – a feeling or circumstance – and bring a word from God to it. Let the Word of God speak to your life.
Invocation
Make the sign of the cross, and say,
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Invitation Prayer
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:5) O Lord, I am lowly and humble. You alone are my inheritance. Amen.
Word: Philippians 4:9
“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”
Meditation
School by Grace Herzog
As a sixteen year old, school is embedded into my everyday life. I wake up and go to high school at 8 AM and I leave sometime around 3-6 PM depending on the day.
Ironically, for most students, the best part of school is when there is no school at all. For many students, summer break is the most anticipated event throughout the entire year.
However, when summer break does start, for the first few days when I don’t have much to do, I frequently find myself lost and bored.
Because the primary goal of school is to learn. Whether it’s about the tangent of a right triangle or the hidden meanings in Shakespeare’s plays, a student’s everyday life consists of acquiring new knowledge. So when the learning stops and when summer break begins, my schedule becomes disrupted. Not being taught upfront results in me forgetting almost everything I learned the year prior by the time I go back to school. Naturally, this is a very frustrating experience for teachers who often spend the first month or so reviewing material.
I think the concept of forgetting concepts in school after a break can be applied to our own Christian faith. We learn something new about God on Sunday morning and take a week-long pause until we show up the next Sunday, forgetful of what we learned the last time. Imagine this from the perspective of God, who wants us to learn more only to find us in a continuous cycle of relearning.
The solution many teachers come up with to encourage students to learn is assignments to work on over the summer. This way, students can practice the concepts they’ve learned in school.
Paul expresses the importance of practice in Philippians, asking the Christians of the Philippian church to practice the things they learned and received and heard from him.
Only when we practice will we be able to grow in our faith with the Lord. For how can we reflect Jesus Christ in our lives when the only time we learn is once a week?
Dear Lord, guide me this week and every week of my life to not take a break from learning more about you. Instead, help me practice what I’ve heard from you. Help me take the messages I hear each Sunday and apply them to my own life. Amen.
Prayer for Family
· For my immediate family (parents, spouse, siblings).
· For extended family (cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents)
· For close friends that are as family to me.
· For those who don’t have families, or whose families are broken.
· For forgiveness and reconciliation where there is division in my family.
· For provision where there is need in my family.
· For God to be the foundation, and the cross the center of my family.
· For a generation yet unborn, future members of our family.
Closing Prayer
O Lord and King, your Kingdom comes even without our prayer. But we pray that it would also come among us. We are desperate for your reign and rule, for all we see is rebellion. Come into my heart, my home, my family, my work, my church, my community. Rule with justice and with mercy. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.