Visio Divina and Lectio Divina: Spiritual Practices for the Third Third of Life

As we age, we are not called to simply settle into what God has always done. Instead, we should be wide-eyed, wondering and seeking to understand how God wants to continue to transform our hearts and the time we share with God.

Two spiritual practices that guide us through engaging with God in transformative ways are Visio Divina and Lectio Divina. Below, author and De Pree Center contributor Alice Fryling has outlined both Visio and Lectio Divina practices for those in the third third of life who wish to reflect with God using nature and words. Our prayer is that your prayer life is transformed through these engaging exercises.

For more on these practices, read Alice Fryling’s article, “Transformation in Prayer as We Age.”

Visio Divina

Pick a photo below and spend some time noticing how it depicts something you are experiencing as you get older. Invite God to listen in on the conversation you are having in your soul about the image.

Lectio Divina

Pick a verse below and spend some time in quiet, letting the verse inform what you would like to say to God. Then listen as God speaks back to you—in silence, through these words, or touching you heart and mind in unexpected ways.

Luke 14:11, MSG
If you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.

Isaiah 50:4, NRSV
The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

Ephesians 3:21, CEV
His power at work in us can do far more than we dare ask or imagine.