SUNDAY SERVICE
December 28, 2025
Embodiment Sunday
The New Year provides an opportunity to reflect upon God's faithfulness through the previous year — and to consider with hopeful anticipation all that God will do in the year to come.
On this Embodiment Sunday, you are invited to create space to embody the Yearly Examen Prayer to thoughtfully allow God to guide your reflections on the year that has passed and to reveal invitations for reset and growth in the New Year by utilizing the reflection prompts below.
As we look back on the year that has passed—with its challenges, uncertainties, and moments of hope—where did you catch glimpses of God’s presence?
Where have you experienced renewal and life?
Isn’t it comforting to know that God, our source of hope, peace, joy, and love, is always creating something new? As you take time to pause, reflect, and reset for the year ahead, may you recognize how God has nourished you and continues to sustain you, our community, and the world around us.
With prayers for a year filled with renewal and joy,
Pastors Keeyon & Stephanie Carter
Look! I’m doing a new thing;
now it sprouts up; don’t you recognize it?
I’m making a way in the desert,
paths in the wilderness.
—Isaiah 43:19 (CEB)
Yearly Examen
Ignatius of Loyola crafted a way of prayer. His method helps us reflect back upon their day and their life in terms of how one experienced God. This prayer is called,
The Daily Examen. It is both a challenging and comforting way to trace the movement of God in one’s life.
At the end of the year and at the beginning of the New Year, we have much to reflect upon. This Yearly Examen prayer was designed to be used at any time you sense a nudge for reflection and a reset.
Allow the Spirit to illuminate the year past and ahead through these postures:
Stillness
Draw near to God. Become present. Settle your body in a comfortable position. Take a few moments to take intentional, slow, deep breaths.
Reflection
Enter into a time of reflection with honesty, humility, and grace. Don’t rush!
Notice what surfaces.
In this moment, what words would describe the way your Spirit feels?
How are you tending to your soul? In what ways are you connecting with God?
Are there practices or habits that have been helpful or unhelpful?
Now, begin to reflect on this past year. Ask God’s Spirit to begin to lift out moments, learnings, and memories in each season.
What has been the area that has consumed my thinking, attentio,n and focus this past year?
In the past 12 months, where have I experienced the greatest sense of consolation (peace/contentment)?
In the past 12 months, what area of my life has given me the most desolation (preoccupation/distress)?
Is there anything you might need to let go?
What ONE word would tend to sum up this past year?
Gratitude
Seeing through a lens of gratitude, take a moment to appreciate
anything from the previous year that has come to the surface.
Write a gratitude list and offer a prayer of gratitude for God’s presence.
Hope
Look toward the year ahead. Take some time to talk with God and one another about your hopes for the New Year.
What practices or habits might you intentionally engage with to lead toward wholeness and flourishing? (physical, emotional, spiritual)
What lifestyle shifts might allow for a more sustainable pattern of work and rest?
What spiritual practices are you being invited to pick up or continue?
How might you steward what has been given to you - your time, experience, resources?
Prayer for the Future Year:
Spend a few moments asking for God’s blessing over the next 12 months.
Consider praying this prayer of Thomas Merton:
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen.
