Shhhh, don’t tell anyone. This is between you, me, and God. I was bored with my daily Bible readings.  I have used several types of reading through the Bible in a year plans and after several years I was just checking off the box. Done, check, next item for today? I’m sorry Lord, I’ll pay more attention tomorrow. Tomorrow arrives and I’m diligent. I read every word of scripture for today’s reading. Wait, what? Did I read today? Yep, every jot and tittle. Done and check.

But deep inside I knew what I was doing. I knew my heart was not right. Where did my love and passion for studying God’s word go? I started praying, asking for God to help me to be hungry for His word again.

I’m an art teacher. One day I was preparing a lesson plan for the Medieval time period in my Art History class. We were going to create an illumination of the first letter in our name. I was doing some research on the Book of Kells to show as an example to the class. The Book of Kells is a book of the four Gospels handwritten and illustrated by Celtic monks. I started thinking about how much of a visual person I am. I would love to have all the art I made in my sketchbook, inspired as I read my Bible, actually in my Bible. People including me write notes in their bible. Why not art?

I started researching to see if other Christian artists do this. I found Rebekah R Jones doing exactly what I had in mind. She offers a wonderful course called Page Prep that I highly recommend, so if you haven’t already, go check out her website at rebekahrjones.com. I did a couple of Bible art challenges she has on her site, but I realized they were not as fun, nor did I take away what I would have if I had mined these gems out of the Bible myself. Some of the visuals were a disconnect for me because I needed my walk to be personal, not someone else’s study. This in no way reflects poorly on Rebekah; her ministry is awesome, and I thank her for moving me forward with this ministry.

It took some time but it’s back…the love affair with God’s word that is. It’s a slower pace now. I am not pushing to read through the Bible in a year. I am spending daily time in God’s word. It may be reading, studying and going down various trails within that study. It may be creating art and filming based on the current study, it may be writing my thoughts about what I read and studied in a devotional blog form. It may be just pondering scripture in my heart as I do life. So, I must thank God for answering prayer because my time with Him and His word is once again exciting, rich and deep. Let’s ponder His word together and enjoy the journey!

Well, I can tell you how I intend this series to be used. But you are welcome to use what is available to you any way that brings you to the feet of Jesus.

I start out with prayer and reading the scripture for the study.  The scripture address for the current study can be found in the devotional or the intro in the videos. I purchased an interleafed Bible for this series so that I would have a blank page for every page of text to do the artwork. Therefore, I break up the scripture segments for each study based on the page I am on. You do not have to buy a new Bible to do this. See the corresponding video to this blog for more information.

Next, I make notes of what stands out to me. I do a little background study, word study, or read some commentaries on the text. I ask these questions. Who, what, when, why, where, and how? I make quick notes of visual ideas I have during the study. I then choose an art idea that will help me to more easily remember what I studied and I run with it. Somewhere in all this, I write a little devotional about what stands out for me. You don’t have to do this; I do it to help you understand what stands out for me and why I made the visual choices in the artwork.

You are welcome to do the same artwork as I do but I encourage you to create your own ideas and art.  This helps make the study more personal. If all this sounds uninspiring and boring let me give you an example of how one of my pages came to be. I was reading in 2 Samuel 6 about David bringing the ark of God (where the presence of God was then) home to the city of David.  At first, David was scared to bring the ark home because of an unfortunate incident with Uzzah. David was also angry with God because of it.  After 3 months passed (I think maybe he worked through some things with his relationship with God) David brought the ark home and danced before the Lord with all his might. This study was over a few days span. I was at work teaching my students about a street artist named Keith Haring and using varying lines in artwork to show movement. While we were creating these electrifying dancing action figures it dawned on me. This is an example of how I want to live my life, dancing in the presence of God with all my might! So, I recreated the project in my Bible as a reminder.  Now that was over a year ago but a few weeks ago I caught my Pastor dancing before service.  I smiled and said you’re dancing (thinking about that scripture art entry my Pastor does not know about). His response was, “Why wouldn’t I be?” Hmmm, I smiled and thought, “Why wouldn’t I be indeed!” See how rich and personal this whole experience is?  Can you imagine creating through the whole Bible once, twice, more? Each time something else would stand out.  Oh, there is so little time to enjoy this journey!

A Video