Week One

Sitting Down

We launch in to this new year and our first action is... to sit down! Let’s take time to pause, to breathe, to take stock, to find ourselves again. Let’s make a space to create a ‘tent of meeting’ where we can spend some intentional time with God (you can find a tent of meeting in Exodus 33: 7-11). We could even set aside a literal physical place where we can come before our wondrous creator, star-maker God. With awe and humility, gratitude and wonder — and all the other emotions that make us the humans we were born to be. This week we will use Psalm 27 to contemplate what it means to really take the time to sit with God, to enter that place of transforming quiet.

Seeds to sow: Does where you pray affect how you pray?

Read Psalm 27: 1-3

The psalm begins with taking shelter in God and taking comfort from an inner peace even when external factors are overwhelming.

As you shelter with God at the start of this year what are you sitting with? And how is God able to be your light in the midwinter dark?

Read Psalm 27: 11-12

Before going on a long journey we often sit, like the psalmist, and make preparations; consulting routes, finding a way, and seeking good paths.

As we hope to set off into this new year on a level path of our own what can we gain from exploring this metaphor of route planning.

If 2024 was not a year, but an epic pilgrimage, what would we need to be preparing? Where would be looking for help? How would we map out the months?

Read Psalm 27: 13-14

Sitting, waiting, wondering. Like the psalmist here (and like the wisemen all those years ago who went on their epic journey from the east to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem) we come before God in hope and expectation, longing and wonder.

In the week ahead, in our daily lives, where are we going to look for God with expectant wonder?