Making Sense Of It… (January)

New Year 2020 (29 December - 1 February) see the Resource Pack PDF for full details including weekly subthemes and daily prompts and Bible readings. See the Discussion Group Questions PDF to see the material adapted for small groups.

The New Year is often a time of reassessment. After the feasting of Christmas and Hogmanay we can find ourselves wanting to get fitter and healthier. The temptation of a crisp new calendar seems to promise a fresh start in other ways: a chance to reboot, restart, relaunch a ‘new’ you. These attempts are often comically doomed to failure. We write long colour coded lists and set unrealistic expectations and are surprised when we crash and burn, when our resolutions become… less resolved… But sometimes the new initiatives stick, January 1st may be an arbitrary time to start something but it’s better than ‘maybe tomorrow’ or ‘probably next week’ and far better than ‘some day’ or ‘one day’.

At this time of year, when many of us are wanting to work on our fitness and our habits, perhaps starting new routines, we thought it would be stimulating to read our Bible mindful of our bodies and our senses. As we re-tune physically we can re-tune spiritually, open to new ways ancient texts might speak to us. There are many, many valid ways of reading scripture — that’s why it is such a dense, rich collection — but often we come to it in pretty similar ways, noticing the same kind of things. This month we invite you to start your year by reading the Bible awake to your senses. As you read think: what could these people see, taste, smell? Think about how what you read affects how you feel, and what you sense. We also want to think about more than the big five senses — we have many more than five — our bodies pick up on time, temperature, balance, music!

See the Resource Pack PDF for more information including weekly subthemes and daily Bible readings and prompts. See the Discussion Group Questions PDF to see the material adapted for a small group context.