December 1, 2025 // Monday of the First Week of Advent
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Psalm: Psalm 122:1-2, 3-4b, 4cd-5, 6-7, 8-9
Reflect on the Word //
The phone call had been a few days ago but the heaviness lingered. A vague restlessness unsettled me and I found myself unable to focus on daily tasks. I wasn’t depressed but someone I loved was, so I carried her pain like it was my own.
Far from being a virtue, the Lord began to illuminate just how dysfunctional this was—and how much it cost me.
I often felt what other people were feeling, not because I was empathetic but because I lacked boundaries. I took responsibility for people and problems that were not mine to bear. I was enmeshed and this way of relating, I discovered, was a pattern.
In the Scriptures, Jerusalem refers not only to the city in Israel but also to God’s people. Our souls are like the city in today’s Psalm. We have walls and gates—boundaries—for the protection and flourishing of the land. Mine were in disrepair. Anyone could come and go, trample and take. I gave without reverence for my own sacred soul and the Lord began to show me that I deserved to be protected.
As disciples of Jesus, we are called to emulate the love of Jesus as self-gift. But we cannot give what we do not have. In order to have “peace within your walls” (Psalm 122:7), we have to have walls—to know where we end and others begin.
The Psalm declares that Jerusalem was “built as a city with compact unity” (Psalm 122:3), and Jesus desires that we experience this unity within ourselves. Whether we’re fractured because of poor boundaries in relationships, our own sin, or traumas that have fragmented our minds and hearts, healing and wholeness are possible in Jesus Christ.
Ask Jesus to reveal the city of your soul: its walls and gates, fields and gardens, buildings and altars to the Lord. Give Him the keys to your inner kingdom and invite Him to rule and reign there, to erect walls as boundaries and to stand guard at the gates, to give you back to yourself so that you might give yourself as a gift to the world.
Relate to the Lord // Imagine your soul as a city. Ask Jesus to show you around.
Beth Davis is a lover of Jesus, a retired youth minister, the Director of Formation for Blessed is She. She is passionate about teaching women how to develop an intimate relationship with Jesus in prayer through writing, speaking, and mentorship. Her favorite things include being the favorite aunt to her five niece and nephews, making friends everywhere she goes, and whatever book she’s currently reading.
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