Yesterday at the Create in Me retreat, I was in charge of the morning devotion time. We had planned on this, and someone in a planning meeting suggested that we have a devotion time that showed us how to use prayer beads. So on Thursday night, I made the announcement that we would be using prayer beads on Saturday morning, so people should be sure to stop by the prayer bead station; they would need at least 5 beads on Saturday morning.
I decided that we would do something very different than the usual approach to morning devotion at this retreat, which uses song and story. I felt a bit apprehensive, because it was different, but then I reminded myself that it's only a 15 minute devotion time.
I chose a passage of a Psalm for five different prayer possibilities. I explained who/what we would be praying for, asked people to choose a bead, read the Psalm, and was silent for 45-90 seconds to give people time to meditate, pray, and/or contemplate. Here's what we did.
We began by anticipating the day with Psalm 108: 2-4.
We prayed for the larger world with Psalm 19: 1-2.
We prayed for those in leadership of all kinds (state, local, world, Church, work, and the people in the room, most of whom are in leadership positions in our lives) with Psalm 33: 14-17.
We prayed for those who are ill or in trouble of any kind with Psalm 69: 13-17.
We then moved to gratitude with Psalm 31: 7-8.
And then we ended with a Psalm verse to send us on our way into our day exploring the intersections between faith and creativity with Psalm 84: 5.
Several people told me how much they liked and appreciated this approach, and one woman took a screenshot of my notes so that she could have the Psalm passages.
No comments:
Post a Comment