A Year of Prayer: Season One Weekday DevotionalsSample

This week, we have joined through some poetry, spoken word, and prayer. We have been focusing on Jesus' promise that ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.’ (Matthew 5:6 NIV)

The supreme blessedness sayings of Jesus are blessed are the poor in spirit (Matthew 5:3), those who mourn (Matthew 5:4), the meek (Matthew 5:5), those who desire righteousness (Matthew 5:6), the merciful (Matthew 5:7), the pure in heart (Matthew 5:8), peacemakers (Matthew 5:9) and the persecuted (Matthew 5:10) and those slandered for Christ’s sake (Matthew 5:11).

Pick two or three of these today to focus on in prayer. Once you’ve prayed for these, pick a fourth one. With some time set aside, invite yourself to write a poem of response, a psalm, exploring your thoughts and reflections this week about hunger and thirst for righteousness as a blessing.

If you need a prompt to help as a starter, try this:

• Write your two or three ‘blessed ares’ down on a page. Write each one on a new line, leaving a few lines between each one for your own writing.
• Once you have done this, then complete the following three responses beneath each one:
• ‘I am blessed when I … for I will be…’
• ‘I thank God because God makes me’ (write the emotion), ‘even when I feel’ (write a sentence explaining how you’ve felt when you have had a negative experience of mourning, or being meek, or peace-making)
• ‘He has made all things beautiful, like…’ (write eight words, describing a time you have seen that blessing at work, in your own life or someone else) ‘and for this I praise God saying’ (write the words of a hymn or psalm)
• Amen!

Prayer: Read your poem back as a prayer.

Action: Try finding someone else who has done today’s devotion, or even someone who hasn’t - to share your poem with. Try reading it backward or writing it again with another scripture in mind. You are a Psalmist, just like we all are called to be!