His Words

There are two things that I use to energize my passion for God's words when reading the Bible starts to feel a little stale.  One is The Message, a modern language paraphrase of the Bible.  I find that familiar verses grab my attention because they're stated differently than in the translation I'd been reading since childhood.  The rephrased words take me back to the actual meaning of the verses, rather than just skimming over easy-to-ignore, half-memorized sentiments for the umpteenth time.

The second thing I do is take a Psalm and try to get at the images of the words.  Scripture, and the Psalms in particular, are so full of imagery, so I start making little sketches to bring a new dimension to the verses.  When I'm ambitious, I'll even get out the box of colored pencils that Donovan and Jenice Baker sent me.

The picture below is scanned from my journal.  Every morning of the work week we gather as a staff to worship, pray, and study the Bible together.  We rotate through being responsible for the devotion, and a few weeks ago my co-worker Tiffanee led us in a time of meditation on Psalm 89.  These were my notes: