Please use one of the prompts below to get your journaling started.

• Explore your fears and what’s behind them.
• Write about a relational conflict you are experiencing.
• List out all that you are grateful for.
• Recall a significant reaction, conversation or event.

 Here are some tools to help you with the devotionals:

• A Guide to Journaling & Prayer
• A Guide to Self-Reflection
• A Chart to help articulate feelings

Mark 12:1-12

¹ And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. ² When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. ³ And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ⁴ Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. ⁵ And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. ⁶ He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ⁷ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ ⁸ And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.

⁹ What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. ¹⁰ Have you not read this Scripture:

“‘The stone that the builders rejected

    has become the cornerstone;

¹¹ this was the Lord’s doing,

    and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

¹² And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.

Questions to help us go deeper

Mark 12:1

• Read Isaiah 5:1-7. How has God been like this vineyard owner in my life?
• What are the implications of God being the vineyard owner and me being the tenant?

Mark 12:3-8

• What can I learn about human nature through the progression of the tenants’ reaction to those sent by the vineyard owner? In what ways can I relate to the tenants?
• What can I learn about God’s heart through his multiple attempts to send his servants (prophets throughout the Old Testament, and ultimately Jesus, his Son)?

Prayer