Thankful for Seasons

First of all, I want to thank you for all the kind words in the comments the past couple of days. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading them! It's like having a mini conversation with each of you, and I love it. Just wanted to begin today by saying that.

 I'm reading Scripture at a funeral today. I've never done that before, and in fact, the last time I participated in a funeral, I was a senior in high school, so it's clearly been a couple of years. 

But I was asked to read Psalm 91, and I told Ryan I wanted to read it from a Bible and not from my phone. So last night, after we got home from the Thanksgiving festivities, I went into our office to choose a Bible from the shelf so I could put it by the door and not run the risk of forgetting it!

I would take my current Bible with me, but it's ESV, and I need to read from NIV, so I looked over my NIV Bibles to pick one. I grabbed my most recently used one, which is dear to me, and opened it to Psalm 91.

That's when I remembered I'd done an in depth study on that at one point in time and had color coded it as part of my study. Since I haven't been on the platform of the church where I'll be reading, and I have no idea how dim or bright the light will be, I wasn't sure how easy it would be to read through some of the colors. I pulled a lesser-marked Bible off the shelf to use for my reading, but I spent a moment looking through that well-loved copy of Scripture before I put it back on the shelf.

I used that Bible for several years; I got it after we moved to Kokomo and used it until we moved to Grabill. That was my Bible when Ryan's mom was sick and dying. That was my Bible when my mom had all her joint-replacement surgeries. That was my Bible when we faced some tough seasons in other ways. That was my Bible in the start of the pandemic. That was my Bible when I read through Scripture in a year. That was my Bible when I did an in-depth study in the Gospels and another one in Psalms. That was my Bible when God began to open the doors for our life/career/home change.

I felt all of that as I thumbed through the pages and saw all my notes scribbled in margins. The verses I had highlighted as they became personally significant. The dates I'd marked to remind myself of how God used certain verses on certain days. 

The edges of the pages were well loved. Curled sticky-note tabs stuck out the top. The first pages of each book were lined with color coded washi tape from when I learned the divisions of Scripture. 

I have a new Bible now...one that I am living in through our right-now seasons. One that I'm marking and noting as I study in-depth. (Right now, Genesis is the most-marked book.) And I know that one day down the road, I'll come back to this one and remember in specific ways the lessons I learned during this time of my life, as noted on the pages of this Bible.

I have a handful of Bibles I've carried for multiple years, and I have others that I used in much shorter seasons of life. But all of them together tell the story of my faith and the things God has taught me along the way. I love it. I'm grateful for it.