Getting Started

From my earliest memories, I have loved words.  Love to hear them, think about them, speak them and write them.  LOVE to spell them!  

I love the exchange of ideas . . . I love learning . . . I love thinking . . . where would we be without language?  The ability to express our thoughts, share our perceptions and emotions, discuss beliefs, challenge ourselves and each other to think further.  

That is my intention with this blog:  to talk about life as I see it.  And how I see life is formed by my relationship with God, and what He says matters to Him in the Bible.  So, in short, this blog will be my attempt to share the fabric of my mind - that accumulation of experience, history, information, rumination and wonder - with the hope that reading these thoughts will lead you to pursue knowing God even more deeply than you do already, with a passion that only He can inspire.

My first clear memory is of a 5 year old me swinging on our backyard swing, singing every song I knew.  There was a crisis in our family, and as everyone was busy handling it, I was doing what I instinctively knew would comfort me - being outside, singing.  Though I wouldn't have known to call Him God at the time, I knew I wasn't alone . . . my words, my voice filled the space around me . . . the trees, the grass, the fresh air.  These avenues have continued to nurture my spiritual life - creation, music, words . . . they all stem from and lead me to Him.  

One of my favorite pursuits is the study of God's word.  I have been studying it since I was a teenager . . . about 40 years now.  I particularly love participating in women's Bible Study groups - the combination of studying alone with God, then meeting with others to share what we've heard from Him as we each met with Him alone . . . there's nothing I've found in life that comes close to the intimacy, challenge and encouragement that pursuing God and His word with fellow believers brings.  

Each year though, from a week before Thanksgiving to a couple of weeks after the New Year, our study groups take a break . . . and I often have struggled with maintaining a consistent study on my own . . . especially as the busyness of the holidays starts to ramp up.  One year, God led me to create an outline for myself to follow during those 8 weeks or so, and I unpacked a section of scripture each day, recording my thoughts and questions in my journal.  It was a rich exercise for me.

Last year, after sharing the bones of this material with several women, the overwhelming response from them was that they would much prefer to read a devotional each day, and then pursue the Bible passages and questions as they were able in the midst of their own holiday busyness.  

So this year, that's how I will be using this blog - during November, the entries will focus on reviewing all we have to be thankful for as we approach Thanksgiving Day.  During the last week of November, the focus will shift to prepping our hearts to spend the first 25 days of December pondering Jesus.  December 1-25 will include 5 "I Am's" of Jesus, 5 parables, 5 miracles, 5 prophecies that Jesus fulfilled and 5 attributes of God.  The week between Christmas and New Year's Day will focus on what He may have in store for each of us in 2015.  The first few weeks of the new year will be given to some of my all-time favorite Bible passages.  

So . . . if this sounds interesting to you, I invite you to subscribe to this blog.  I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you, and to hearing back from you  sharing what YOU think in response.