Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns
If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…
I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…
I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…
We’re on vacation, at the beach, so it’s no surprise that songs about the ocean are stuck in my head.
Here’s one of my favorites, by Ten Shekel Shirt.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLMZx_ddFpQ]
I don’t know exactly what it is about the ocean, but I want to lose myself in it. I don’t really like to swim, and I don’t dwell on drowning, but when I see the ocean, I’m drawn to it and I want to go deeper into it and let it overcome me. I’m literally in awe of it. I don’t think I could study the ocean enough to ever really understand how big it is, how vast, how rich in life and wonder. It’s a mystery. Beautiful, wild and unpredictable. Yet also refreshing and calming.
Like God.
The more I know Him, the more there is to know. He calls me into deeper relationship with Him, yet I won’t know all there is to know about Him in a lifetime. He is wild and calm, beautiful and terrifying, unpredictable yet unchanging.
Want to hear another ocean-themed song that’s been in my head? Click here. You can listen to it free on Spotify.
Born and raised in the Midwest, living in the mid-Atlantic, I need to be reminded about this side of God.
What songs are in your head this week?
Two Christmases ago, my in-laws gave me a copy of the One Year Chronological Bible (Tyndale). This version of the Bible arranges the books and chapters of the Bible into a beginning-to-end sort of timeline. For example, if a story appears in all three Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), you would read those on the same day instead of reading all the way through Matthew, then Mark, then Luke.
It’s hard to follow sometimes, with a Psalm here and there in the middle of a historical narrative, and it takes some getting used to — the idea that the books are out of the order we normally would think them in. But I have to say, I was enriched by using this Bible. It took me 14 months to get through because I had some weeks where I didn’t read the Bible for several days, but I’m so glad to have read the Bible all the way through and to have gained some understanding about the time when things took place.
FAVORITES: Each day’s readings were doable, although some days I thought they were long. But the flow of reading the stories chronologically made even long passages bearable. At times, I felt like I was reading a biography or memoir, which admittedly is not always how I feel about reading the Bible.
FAULTS: Really? I’m going to fault the Bible? No, not the Bible itself. My only real criticism is that when talking to my seminary-student husband, I learned that some of the scholars’ decisions about chronology could be questioned. Just because this version bills itself as THE chronological Bible doesn’t mean it’s perfectly compiled.
IN A WORD: Fresh. I was excited to read the Bible each day, and I picked up on things I hadn’t seen before because of the way familiar stories were presented. I heartily recommend the One Year Chronological Bible to anyone who wants or needs a fresh look at God’s Word.