Day 21: Week three: gifts for others

Reflect

Week three is done. You have looked at your gifts, your craft, your possible calling in this time, your capacity to serve, your need for community and the power of small beginnings. That is a great deal of ground for seven days.

If you have found it harder to answer these questions than the earlier ones, that is not unusual. Identity can be approached by remembering what is true. Calling often has to be discovered by doing. It does not usually arrive as a feeling or a flash of certainty. It tends to appear as you act, notice, and follow what energises and serves.

Today's verse is a prayer, and an unusual one. It asks that God's beauty rest upon us, and that he establish the work of our hands. Not the work of someone else's hands, and not a perfect plan, but the actual work we do. It treats our ordinary work as something God can bless and make lasting.

Notice too that it is a request, not a claim. We do not demand outcomes. We offer our work and ask that it be established. That is the posture of a person who does their part and trusts the rest to God, which is a way of working that reduces some of the pressure.

As you look back at this week, notice what you are drawn to, what gave you energy, and what you would like to keep exploring. Those are clues. Next week we turn to practical next steps: simple, small and unhurried. You will be building on what you have found here.

For today there is no task but to look back with kindness. You can mark the day done, make your week three card if you would like one, and rest.

Verse

“And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”

Psalm 90:17 (KJV)

Journal

Looking back over this week, what gave me energy? What would I like to explore further?

One small action

Write a short list of the three most promising clues from this week: a gift, a kind of service, or a community. Make your week three card if you like.

A 60-second breath prayer

Breathe in: “Establish the work of my hands”

Breathe out: “I offer it to you”

Breathe slowly for about a minute, saying the first line as you breathe in and the second as you breathe out.