year in review: 2019 favorites (yours & mine)
/As the year (and the decade!) come to a close, I thought it would be fun to look back on the top five posts of the year—your favorites (the ones with the most reads) and mine (the ones that I most enjoyed writing).
March of 2020 will be the ten-year anniversary of when I began blogging. I was sixteen and getting more into photography, and I started a free Blogger site to share my photos. I had no idea that over the next ten years, I would go to Bible school, begin sharing more words than images, process so much of God’s work in my life in this very public way, visit the Holy Land twice, share countless Bible study resources I created, write a devotional, read through the Bible with hundreds of people each year, create the Bible180 Challenge Journal, or stand on the cusp of releasing an entire interactive textbook on how to study each of the seven types of Biblical literature.
God works in mysterious ways.
Here’s to another decade of following His lead.
Your Favorite Essays to Read in 2019
1. John Crist, Jesus Christ, and Me, Too
This article was by far the most-read, most-shared post of 2019—which tells me that this is a conversation we need to have, and a topic many of us are thinking about. For generations the Church’s general response to sin has been shame, which has never eradicated sin—it has only driven it deeper into darkness and hiding. I am so excited to watch the Church turn toward the example of Jesus in this area.
2. Scenes from the Holy Land
The response to the photography I did on my recent tour of the the Holy Land was so positive that I decided to make a book out of it. A friend who spent much of her childhood in Israel said the pictures “captured her home”—and I will treasure that feedback until the day comes when I get to go back to the Land again!
3. Half the Church
Book reviews are a rarity on this blog, but I was so impacted by this book that I felt I had to share what I learned. I am still meditating on the principles Carolyn Custis James shared and how they should revolutionize the way churches do God’s work in the world.
4. How to Study the Bible: Discover the Story
That the last two items on this list are both extremely recent and extremely well-received shows me just how much my readers desire to learn how to study the Bible for themselves, which is so exciting to me! In just a few weeks, this post gained enough of a viewership to make the top 5 of 2019. This, the independent and in-depth study of the Bible, is where my heart lies (and is the topic of my next book).
5. How to Study the Bible: Ask Good Questions
The three questions I shared in this article are the foundation of all my own study of the Bible. They have changed my study from superficial and self-focused to deep and God-centered. My upcoming text on how to study the Bible and my recent release, the Bible180 Challenge Journal, both depend heavily on these questions and teach exactly how to use them.
My Favorite Essays to Write in 2019
1. Of Math, Millennials, and the Mission Field
You all probably know that one of the driving forces behind what I write is what I, myself, need to learn or understand. This was one of those articles: I had been mulling over the state of Christianity in my generations for weeks, and I wrote this post to make sense of all those thoughts, ideas, and questions.
2. John Crist, Jesus Christ, and Me, Too
I was sitting on my couch staring at the depressing comments on John Crist’s Instagram when the Holy Spirit prodded me to get up and write this post. It’s one of those essays that just exploded out of my brain, through my fingertips, and onto the screen. It inspired me, rebuked me, and healed me, all at the same time.
3. Background Noise
Like the above, this was a processing post—processing both my own feelings and the larger social and cultural patterns they seemed to reflect. It was a pep talk to myself as much as anyone. (I’m noticing a theme here.)
4. Starving, Yet Satisfied
I loved writing this post because I didn’t write a single word of it for anyone but myself, and that’s often when I do the most self-shaping and self-discovery. I wrote it as if I was writing my own journal, and I learned so much. This was the moment when I saw my two selves clearly: The Self I had built according to the perceived expectations of the people around me, and the Self that God made me. The two still blur into one another and split away again regularly, but with this glimpse of both side-by-side, my whole definition of success changed. I no longer see success as continuing to build the first Self according to the blueprint of this world, with all its achievements and plans and accolades, but as living my life as the Self that God created—humble and insignificant as she may be.
5. The Story of the Bible
Before this was ever a blog post, I wrote it for the introduction to my book, Bedrock: A Foundation for Independent Biblical Study. It was one of the most difficult things I have ever written. Summing up a Book with 1,189 chapters in less than 1,500 words demanded that I pull out only the most significant threads of what is a massive and complex tapestry—but I enjoyed the challenge, and I think I like the end result.
What was your favorite post of 2019? Did it make the list?
Let me know in the comments!
