Prayers of the People - Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

Introduction
The Seasons of Our Lives
“Praying through the Christian year offers us the opportunity to embrace God’s dream,
to connect intimately with God in spiritual practices that shape and form us
and to act in compassionate ministries that transform our world.”
God had a dream and acted on that dream with
amazing creativity and love. With the rhythm
of evening and morning in place, God placed
plants and animals in a beautiful garden, to be
cared for by God’s ultimate creation: man and
woman, created in God’s own image. Walking
in that garden with God must have been a
delightful experience with all nature living in
harmonious relationship with God.
But life in this wholesome setting was
not to be. Disobedience brought an end to
paradise. Darkness, pain, and evil took over the
garden.
Nevertheless, God has pursued a
relationship with humanity and has had
the highest aspirations for all of creation.
In redreaming the dream, God sent Jesus,
God’s own Son, as a means of forgiveness
and reconciliation. God’s dream lives on as
we accept God’s love, follow Jesus, and share
God’s love with the world around us. We
become part of God’s good news.
From the beginning, as God set the sun
and moon in the sky, the world has moved in
a rhythm marked by days and nights, seasons
and years. While our busy lives are often ruled
by calendars and clocks, as followers of Jesus
Christ, our lives are also guided by the seasons
of the Christian year.
Even as January 1 marks the beginning
of the calendar year, the season of Advent is the
beginning of the Christian year as we anticipate
the celebration of Christ’s birth. Christmas
Day is followed by Epiphany, Lent, Easter,
Pentecost, and the season of “ordinary” time or
Kingdomtide.
Praying through the Christian year offers
us the opportunity to embrace God’s dream,
to connect intimately with God in spiritual
practices that shape and form us and to act in
compassionate ministries that transform our
world. Over the next 12 months, this guide will
encourage us to pay attention to the rhythms of
our lives: the days and months of the calendar
year, the seasons of the Christian year, and
the seasons of our spiritual lives that allow us
to embrace God’s dream, grow closer to God
through spiritual practices, and share God’s
love with those around us.
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