The Saturday Six

One.

I don't remember if I've talked about these on the Saturday Six before...but I love them so much that even if I have mentioned them before, they're worth a new mention. The ESV Journaling Bible set. There's an Old Testament set and a New Testament set, and I think both of them look absolutely DELIGHTFUL. Wish list!! Can you even imagine how many notes I could take in these??

Two.

We've crossed into a new month since the last Saturday Six, which means I have a fresh one-second-per-day video for you!

Three.

I stumbled upon this blog via Pinterest this week, and I had the BEST time hopping around the posts. I think I was extra intrigued because of our recent stay in a small cabin! This blogger is a young wife and mom who lives in a small cabin in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I enjoyed reading about full time cabin life in a much more remote area than where I live!

Four.

Last week I told you about the study I just completed through the Daily Grace Company. They are actually having a really big sale right now - on that study and others, too - and the price is just right! FIVE DOLLARS! Check it out if you want to stock up on some studies. I believe the sale ends tomorrow!

Five.

Ahhhh, letter writing. It IS a lost art, isn't it? I grew up with pen pals galore, wrote lengthy letters to teachers on my summer breaks, and now? Well, a Christmas letter and thank you notes are about all I crank out in the letter world these days. (And I'm behind on thank you notes, so that's embarrassing.) But I loved this post about the beautiful lost art of letter-writing!

Six.

Source

As you know, last year Ryan and I studied our way slowly through the Gospels (I've been sharing that reading program with you each month this year) and I've chosen to work my way slowly through Psalms in 2020.

I like to use a commentary when I study, because clearly I have much to learn about context and original language and such. I wanted a commentary on Psalms that was robust enough to cover all the verses, and I landed on a two-volume set called Exploring Psalms by John Phillips. I just finished Volume One last weekend while we were on vacation, so I'll give my quick review of it here.

Volume One covers Psalms 1-88 and is 732 pages long. (That constituted robust in my book.) I would be very interested to see if other commentators on Psalms would approach the writing from a different angle. MUCH of this commentator's focus is on how the words of Psalms applied to Jesus' life and even to future times beyond what we're living in. I wasn't expecting that angle, but it has really been interesting to see how the words have a much broader scope than I've tended to give them in my own reading.

This book was also published in the late 80s, and you can tell that much of the author's personal outlook is driven by world events of the 80s. I don't think I was expecting that, either. That part is actually a little startling, occasionally. I'm reading along about the Bible and suddenly I'm reading about world events from my childhood in Russia and the US.

Having said those two things, I will say I am learning much from his words. I appreciate how he explains original language meaning, and at times how one Psalm could easily be attributed to multiple situations in the writer's life. I've scribbled tons of notes in the margins of my Bible, and I'm diving into the second volume to finish out my study!

Would I recommend these? I would! I don't regret getting them, even though they pull from a different line of thought than I was expecting. Even so, I think I might like to study Psalms again sometime using a different commentary to see the similarities and differences from another point of view.