Cultivate hope each day this week.
December 6: Hope in Action
- Scripture: Micah 6:8 — He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?
- Meditation: Hope comes from having the belief we can do something to make a difference. Hope calls us to action in pursuit of justice. Along the way, we are asked to be servants for others.
- Spiritual Practice: This season, identify a cause that promotes change and empowerment in your community. Learn more about it. Share what moves you. Support this cause that speaks to you, by volunteering or contributing and spreading the word about how it makes a difference. Good causes need good friends.
SONGS:
- Servant of Peace by Snatam Kaur: https://youtu.be/aiiua9ubwN8?si=WIifhd6oMPL_kdt3
- Servant Song performed by Richard Gillard & Betty Pulkingham: https://youtu.be/SIhhxhPOwfc?si=dbvgsh6Ahfzv0MhZ
For A Leader by John O’Donohue
May you have the grace and wisdom
To act kindly, learning
To distinguish between what is
Personal and what is not.
May you be hospitable to criticism.
May you never put yourself at the center of things.
May you act not from arrogance but out of service.
May you work on yourself,
Building up and refining the ways of your mind.
May those who work for you know
You see and respect them.
May you learn to cultivate the art of presence
In order to engage with those who meet you.
When someone fails or disappoints you,
May the graciousness with which you engage
Be their stairway to renewal and refinement.
May you treasure the gifts of the mind
Through reading and creative thinking
So that you continue as a servant of the frontier
Where the new will draw its enrichment from the old,
And may you never become a functionary.
May you know the wisdom of deep listening,
The healing of wholesome words,
The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,
The decorum of held dignity,
The springtime edge of the bleak question.
May you have a mind that loves frontiers
So that you can evoke the bright fields
That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.
May you have good friends
To mirror your blind spots.
May leadership be for you
A true adventure of growth.