This month begins with the last week of Christmas, so it’s still party time! Feast seasons are times to build community through generosity, extravagance and, well, food! Whilst Christmas lasts, maybe you still have time to get your group together for a shared meal, take a big tin of mince pies down to your local homeless outreach or put on an impromptu gathering for your neighbours.
A new year is also obviously a good time to take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going. Using the ‘examen’ prayer of looking back over a period of time (a year for example!) can help us to see a heavenly perspective on the year just passed and learn what we need to take forward into the new year.
January is the month we’re most likely to get snow – and your prayer team are never ones to miss a creative prayer opportunity :) Labyrinths are an ancient form of structured prayer walk that can help you focus your mind onto prayer by giving your body a simple task to perform. If it snows, look up online how to draw a labyrinth path (or just draw a big spiral!) and mark one out in the snow, then slowly walk the path you’ve drawn as a meditation. People sometimes use a labyrinth to pray one thing on the way in and another on the way out – maybe pray for forgiveness on the way in, pause in the centre to receive it, and pray for help to live it out on the way out - or pray over your activism over the past year, thanking God for success and being encouraged for areas that have succeeded or made progress, and pray for courage and energy to keep working for justice in the coming year?
This month we also start to think about disinvestment from fossil fuels, as we join the disinvestment movement. As we prepare, take some time this month to pray about your own money, where it is spent and how it is invested, and whether there’s anything you can do to make it work better for justice.
Download the prayer calendar below today – and have a happy and prayer filled 2014!
