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| This is me beating my friend out of work for the first and only time in 2020! |
At the start of each new year, I journal. Not about goals or resolutions. Instead, I look back at the year and highlight the themes and lessons that illuminate from my journaling the year prior. My journaling does not look like me in a Muskoka chair with a coffee overlooking a picturesque lake. It looks like me swigging an Iced Capp, holding my phone, often voice dictating and texting in the car before I step out into the parking lot at work. 2020 was the first year I started using the Bible App on my phone. I mean really using the Bible App. Even before the Bible App, my journaling was sometimes done in the same room as my kids' TV-watching.
Maybe you're the type of Christian that spends long hours in a closet praying or studying the Bible in a Muskoka chair with your morning coffee. I'm not. I am not saying this is wrong. I am saying it is not me. I am more likely to have a worship song stop me in my tracks while baking in the kitchen or to pray in the washroom at work (sorry for taking that extra minute folks). Sweet Jesus, give me patience now, why couldn't the person before me put the seat down!? I promise I don't pray in there when there is a line!
When I went back to look at my journal for 2020, I had written nothing. Great, 2020 yielded no fruit from my mediations with my Creator. I went into my Bible App to find notes, highlights and scripture images galore as well as 34 studies completed.
2019 was difficult and prepared me for 2020. In 2019, we left a loving church family during which time I struggled with my health and nearly lost my husband to a pulmonary embolism. If you know me, you've heard it before, but it was a life-changing year for us and as a result, that year shapes who we are today.
At the start of 2020 last year, I wrote down Haggai 2:9
‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”
And Psalm 4, which I clung to in 2019, specifically verse 8:
In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord,
make me dwell in safety.
I learned how the power of practicing His Presence one moment at a time was sustaining. In the car. In the kitchen. During bedtime whisper moments with the kids. For us, 2020 was peaceful. I ended the year 2020 with a study on Martha and Mary and it spoke to me. Martha and Mary have different gifts, truth be told I am more like Martha checking off the to-do list. The Bible App has helped me sit at His feet a little longer and more often this year.
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:41-42
