A Legacy in a Bible

This year our small group is doing verse mapping. (If you want to learn more about it, this post by Arabah Joy is a great resource and where I learned most of what I know about it.) The premise of verse mapping is that you take a verse and study it in depth, from a variety of angles, to learn as much as you can about the verse or section of Scripture.

As I told you one day last fall, I was so nervous when we introduced this idea to the group, because it was so different from anything we had ever done, and I wasn't sure everyone would be excited about preparing something of their own choosing to share out loud with the rest of the group each week. I feared some might quit the group on the spot or that in one night flat, we would ruin the trust and ease that our group had been building together for the last year.

All of that fell into the category "lies from the enemy."

It is perhaps very true that some of our group members have been nervous to share. Some may feel like it's a lot of work to prepare a verse for every meeting. But I will tell you this: Ryan and I find ourselves shaking our heads in wonder after every single meeting, because the way the verses dovetail is absolutely amazing. None of us confer before a meeting to see what another person is sharing. In fact, even among the couples in the group, some don't share with their own spouse what they're going to say at the meeting. (Ryan and I often don't reveal our verses to each other ahead of time.)

And yet as we take our turns and go around the circle, we see how the verses all fit together. Each of us has chosen something personally meaningful and in the end, they all blend to make this beautiful study. One person will refer to what another person shared moments ago, and I find myself cheering inside because they're listening to each other! They're learning together and from each other!

As I study my verses for each meeting, I usually go back through each of my old Bibles that sit in my office. I have a dozen or so that I've used in my adult life, and each one represents a different season. I've made notes on their pages - some from personal study and some from sermons and group studies. I've highlighted, underlined, and dated.

When I worked on my verse that I shared this week, I noticed that I'd starred it in the Bible I used for the majority of my twenties. That was the season when singleness nearly flattened me, and my prayers to find my husband soared to never-before-seen heights. In this one particular Bible, I'd marked every single verse I could find that somehow helped me hang onto hope that God hadn't forgotten me. I'd marked the verse I shared.

In this season of life, that verse is still dear to me, but for entirely different reasons. But as I shared with the group, I mentioned how it had been one of my go-to verses as a struggling single girl.

The next day, I listened to a teaching session by a writer. She was speaking to fellow writers about preserving personal stories, which you know is a passion of mine. As she offered different ideas for doing that in a practical way, one of her suggestions (for people who really don't enjoy writing) was to make notes in a Bible and leave your Bible as a legacy for the generations that come after you.

Not long after listening to her teaching session, I worked on my next verse mapping adventure. I paged through my Bibles and noticed my own journey with this particular verse, from my teen years through the present day. I'd marked this verse in almost every single Bible, but it was clear from my other notes around it that it meant different things to me in different seasons.

I don't know whether or not anyone else would find anything of value in my Bible-notes, but I'm confident that I love the growth journey I see in their pages as I move from Bible to Bible.

I hope I never give up leaving a legacy in a Bible. I hope I continue to make fervent notes, marking the things God teaches me along the way, and when I'm old and gray(er) I can sit and look back over our walk together and all He's taught me.

And somewhere along the way, in those scribbled notes, I'll find some pieces of wisdom shared by friends who met in our living room as part of our small group. Friends who mapped out wisdom and shared it with the rest of us, so we could all grow closer to the Lord together.