Belovedness Belongs to All

INTRO
Every week there will be a new prayer to be practiced. These prayers are just suggestions and you don't have to practice the current prayer. Feel free to experiment with any of the previous prayers. Prayer is just an opportunity to spend time with our creator and learn to live and love more like His son, Jesus. There is no one way to pray. All of us are created with different personalities and different ways of relating, not only to one another, but to God as well. If you find a practice that works for you stick with it. God draws each of us in, with different means. Thomas Merton spoke of prayer the best when he said, "Prayer is turning towards God, if you can't pray, just turn towards God."

“Quite often out of an intimate encounter with God, encounters with other human beings becomes possible…If you are the beloved of God, if you start thinking about other people’s lives, you start realizing that they are s beloved as you are. One of the profound experiences of the spiritual life is that when you discover yourself as being the beloved son or daughter of God, you suddenly have new eyes to see the belovedness of other people.
It is very interesting because it is the opposite of what happens is the world when they say you are very special, that means you are not the same as the rest. If you win an award and they say you are different than others, then that award is valuable because not everybody gets that award. The world is saying that you are only the best when not everybody else is the best.”
- Henri Nouwen

The Following was adapted from an Advent Devotional by Henri Nouwen.
Mark 9:33-35
They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.
Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

1 John 3:1
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Make a list of blessings and benefits that have been given to you by God, your Savior. Take some time and give thanks for these undeserved gifts and blessings. If possible, pass these blessings on to others.

Pray:
Lord, please take away my desire to make something of my self, to make myself special. Help me to remember my identity is as Your beloved child. May I see others as your beloved as well. I desire to become less, to become the least and help others to see their belovedness.
Amen.