My Favorite Planner & Devotional Guide to Connect with God

Sometimes spending time with God is hard because I don’t know where to start. Having a really good devotional or reading plan to guide my time with God often helps. It feels like less work.

Honestly, I’m a bit picky when it comes to devotionals. But I do like having a plan. A plan keeps me accountable, consistent, and reinforces my motivation.

That’s why I want to highlight a liturgical planner that I love and use every day. It combines a reading plan with a daily planner into one convenient, amazing, devotional tool. I’m not getting paid to share this with you. When I showed a friend of mine this planner she was so intrigued I thought you might like to know about it too.

The Sacred Ordinary Days Planner

This amazing spiritual formation resource integrates a calendar and daily planner with rhythms and practices grounded in Scripture and church history. Rather than separating life with God from daily tasks, the Sacred Ordinary Days planner helps me see how they are inextricably linked. It reminds me that God is with me throughout my day and in all of my activities.

The Day to Day Nuts and Bolts

 

Now that my kids are 5 and 3, I’ve found the space to read again in the mornings. Most of the time anyway. So I’ve been able to carve out a short, yet meaningful morning quiet time routine again using the Sacred Ordinary Days Planner.

Each morning, I start my day by reading the selected readings at the top of the daily page. The readings follow the Book of Common Prayer and/or the Revised Common Lectionary. There are usually four selections: an Old Testament passage, a Psalm, a New Testament passage, and a reading from the Gospels. Sometimes I choose to read all four selections, and some days I read just one. I find it so helpful to have a small portion of reading all planned out for me, and some passages are only a few verses which makes it compatible with #momlife.

Once my morning is grounded in God, I plan out my day. I like that the daily pages provide an area for three important projects. As a mom of young kids, three projects is about as much as I can handle in a day. I also enjoy that there is ample room for note-taking as well. It’s a great place to hold all the things that come up that my #mombrain tends to forget.

Following the Liturgical Year

This planner is unique because it follows the church liturgical year, rather than the calendar year. The liturgical year starts on Advent, which usually falls at the end of November, instead of January 1. There is also an academic year planner available that begins on August 1. Those new 2017-2018 planners are available now! Even the academic planner is divided into the liturgical seasons.

Each season of the liturgical year is broken up into sections with a helpful introduction for that particular season. While I’ve been familiar with Advent for a while, it’s been so interesting to learn more about the meaning and history of the seasons of Epiphany, Pentecost, even Ordinary Time.

Integrating the Practice of Examen Prayer

Another feature I appreciate are the weekly reflection pages. The planner guides you in a weekly prayer of examen to reflect on the previous week and then plan accordingly for the following week. Guides for this practice are provided at the beginning of the planner as well.

A Condensed, Smaller Version – The Weekly Planner

As you can see from the pictures, the daily planner is, well, a bit hefty. If that seems like too big a bite for you at the moment, try the weekly planner. I actually recently switched to the weekly format because the daily planner did feel like a lot to keep up with, both in size and content. While I do appreciate the smaller size of the weekly planner, I’ll probably switch back to the daily format in November because I do miss some of its features. Below I created a table of the pros and cons of each format.

If you’re in a particularly busy season or still have kids under 3, I highly recommend the weekly version. Before my youngest turned 3, trying to read more than one short Psalm or even a few verses at a time was nearly impossible. I got frustrated pretty fast. While you’re in the crazy season of sleep deprivation, or have a busy toddler underfoot, the daily format may be a bit too much for you in this season.

While the weekly planner isn’t available for the new academic year, the 2017 weekly planner is actually on sale for 50% off making them a great deal and a low cost way to try it out if you’re interested.

Pros & Cons: Daily vs. Weekly

Since I appreciate each planner for different reasons, here’s a run down of the pros/cons of each.

Daily Planner Pros	Daily Planner Cons	Weekly Planner Pros	Weekly Planner Cons
Daily pages with plenty of room for appointments, tasks, notes	Bulky, more difficult to carry around in your purse	Small, easy to carry around	Less space for notes, but still adequate
Four passages to read with readings from both the Revised Common Lectionary and Book of Common Prayer	Sometimes the reading feels like too much, especially if you’re a bit OCD like me and feel like you need to read it all	Reading is spread over the week so there is no pressure from day to day to complete the reading	Sometimes I want a little more reading for the week
Two bookmarks for easy reference of daily and monthly pages	Can’t see your whole week at a glance	Weekly spread makes it easier to see and plan for the week	No bookmarks to hold your place
Like the monthly layout better in this planner			Monthly layouts are small

Personally, I really love having my schedule and my devotional notes and readings all in one place. It helps keep my real life in line with the life God is bringing forth in me. I think you may find it a helpful resource as well.

Please feel free to send me any questions you may still have. Or visit the Sacred Ordinary Days website and shop here.