True Love

I was born with the incredible blessing of being in a loving Christian family. Our faith was central to our lives. My mom is a great cook & she enjoyed having our clergy for dinner. That personal contact added a lot to my growing faith. I really didn't know much about other denominations except that they had a lot of misconceptions about Catholics. We all fear the unknown and to me the vast array of protestant churches was perplexing. A church from my hometown was exposed for all sorts of false teaching and worse on Donahue so I was very content to stick with what I knew. That changed however when I met my future husband & visited his Lutheran church. There I got a glimpse of how big the body of Christ is. I became thirsty to learn more about the bible through personal study. Hearing their confirmation youth speak about their faith challenged me to dig deeper.

God has a way of opening doors and leading us to the resources we need. He gave me a huge surprise at a local retreat when one of my favorite author's, Cynthia Heald spoke. I will never forget her sharing that God is only author who shows up every time you read his book. That statement could be the basis of a lifetime of blogs. It may have you thinking I'm nutty to believe that I can personally hear from God when I read the bible. My hope is that you are curious enough to pray & invite God to open your eyes & ears so you experience yourself it's one of 'those things' that is crazy enough to be true! I had personal experience with learning more from hearing different teaching about the same scripture but I didn't know that I could read the same passage and learn something new each time I picked it up.

Cynthia also challenged us to make a habit of reading through the entire bible regularly saying, 'I don't want to meet Obadiah in heaven and not have anything to say when he asks, what did you think of my book?' I've really struggled with reading my bible cover to cover, especially with parts of the Old Testament. I am up late writing because I am excited to share with you an opportunity to see how amazing bible study can be. I'm determined to meet my goal to read the whole bible this year & found a blog/study group that is doing just that. It's interactive & I was just blown away by reading posts of everyone sharing what they learned. Please consider checking it out: http://wendypope.blogspot.com/2008/11/wordly-wise.html

Another resource that radically expanded my understanding of scripture is the book 'Door Posts'. Timothy Botts is a calligrapher and his art makes the word come alive. In his work he shares about the creative process and it helped me learn to think differently about the words & their meaning.
The beauty of God's word is without end. I encourage you to see it for yourself here: http://www.timbotts.com/
http://www.inkwellgreetings.com/store.php/bworcester/pg4339/framed_prints

I’ve found the truth in God's word to be the most powerful healing, strength and hope. If you do not make study of this magnificent text part of your regular reading, I beg you to pick it up again. God’s word has inspired more writing than any other. If we skip over this guide He left us, we cannot truly know Him . Don't cheat yourself by dismissing a letter of love from the one who knit us himself, created the air we breathe and set the stars above us in their place.

One of the things I'm most grateful for on my spiritual journey is meeting my husband . We chose this verse for a reading at our wedding. It's been a prayer and blessing ever since that day. It is also my license plate EPH CH3


... Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

It just doesn't get any better than that dear friends.

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