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The Empowering Word of the Month for December 2025 is, Reverence.  Reverence is the quiet power that can transform your life.  In a world that moves quickly, and a life that sometimes moves onward way too soon, reverence can feel like an old-fashioned word.  Reverence is something reserved for sacred places or rare ceremonies.  It is far more than a ritual.  It is a way of seeing. A way of being. A way of walking through life with your eyes open, your heart attuned, and your spirit awakened.

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Reverence begins with a pause.  It is the moment you take a breath before speaking, the way you look at another person and recognize an entire universe behind their eyes. It is the softening that happens when you allow yourself to be moved; by beauty, courage, wisdom, vulnerability, and by truth.  Reverence reveals that the “ordinary things” we pass each day are anything but ordinary.  You can feel it in a morning light that glows across a kitchen table, in the pages of a book that changed you, in the quiet loyalty of a friend who has never once let you down. Reverence teaches us to be in the moment long enough to notice the love in the people in your life, not just who’s familiar.

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Reverence makes us better, because it helps you appreciate what you have.  When we approach life with reverence, we become more patient with others and gentler with ourselves. Anger loosens its grip; gratitude grows roots. We listen more deeply. We speak more honestly. We act with intention rather than impulse, and in the spaces created by this gentleness, courage becomes possible. 

 

Reverence also strengthens connection.  It inspires you to treat every encounter (whether with a person, place, thing, or an idea) as a chance to honor something greater than yourself. When we see each other with reverence, compassion becomes natural. Love becomes expansive, and community becomes stronger. The most beautiful thing about reverence is that it helps you remember who you are.

It reminds us that we belong to something larger than our schedules and anxieties, that we are part of a world rich with meaning, history, and hope.  A God like hope that opens us up to the presence of God.  Not in a distant, or unreachable way, but in the gentle whisper woven through every moment of our lives. Some feel God’s presence in a prayer answered quietly, in an unexpected peace during turmoil, or in the unexplainable strength that appears when we need it.  In the face of lies, hurt, and pain, caused by deception, you may still feel those emotions because of your humanness. 

 

However, there is a But God…that will give you unmovable strength to get through it, and come out better, stronger, wiser, and move upward and onward to the BETTER God has for you.  Reverence teaches you to recognize in difficult moments that they are not unfortunate coincidences.  They are reminders that you are kept, protected, guided, and deeply loved.  To live with reverence is to notice God’s fingerprints on our days (in the kindness of a stranger, in the rhythm of each breath we take, and in the beauty that we cannot explain but can always feel).

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Reverence helps you remember who you are.  It reminds us that we belong to something larger than our schedules and anxieties, that we are part of a world rich with meaning, history, hope, and divine presence. It reconnects us with wonder, the kind that tells us we are never walking alone.  Reverence does not require we see and understand things the first time with clarity.

It only asks that we look again. That we soften, listen, and let ourselves be humbled by the beauty around us and within us.  In that humility, we rediscover strength.  In that quiet, we rediscover clarity.  In that reverence, we rediscover God, we feel a conviction that makes us live an honest life in truth, and embrace the sacredness of simply being alive.  This month, although we are almost in a new year, don’t rush through it, reverence it.  Breathe and think about your life in its totality, where you want to go, how you want to get there, what you want to do…then breathe again, envision it, embrace it, go after it…look again…breathe again…be honest…be courageous, see deeply, love in a real way, live with reverence, and let it change you.

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By Lynnette Clement