year in review: 2019 favorites (yours & mine)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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What was your favorite post of 2019? Did it make the list?

Let me know in the comments!

these are the days: december

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December always feels to me like an airplane coming in for a landing—only instead of slowing down and preparing safely for the touchdown onto the runway, the plane just keeps accelerating as it drops. The tarmac is getting closer and closer at an alarming rate and everyone on board has a glint of panic in their eyes until finally, at the last possible second, the landing gear come down and the plane all but crash-lands, careening wildly into the start of another new year.

Anyone else? Or is this just me?

On top of the normal December rush, we are closing out another decade. It seems quite impossible that we stand on the cusp of the year 2020. I still remember coloring my printer-paper-taped-together “2000” sign with red and yellow markers while the world held its breath for the new millennium. How is it that one-fifth of that “new” millennium is already behind us?

Sorry, I don’t mean to freak anyone out. But I do wonder—can you sense the ongoing crescendo of time, as I do? It always seems to be getting louder and faster to me, like some terrifying amusement park ride with a whirlpool effect: the longer we spin, the faster we go and the harder it is to slow down.

I’ll be honest that it scares me a little. But there is a delight of anticipation, too. Just as I imagine Israel was waiting with both uncertainty and excitement for the Messiah to come, the Church waits in the discomfort of impatience for Him to come again.

For two thousand years the expectation has been building, the music has been rising, the years have been turning. Every day His return draws nearer. He came once as the Bright Morning Star, the low-hanging planet on the horizon that is first to predict the dawn; next time, He comes as the Sun itself, whose Kingdom will illumine even the ends of the earth.

Suggested Thinking

Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.

And he said to me, “These words are faithful and true”; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must soon take place.

“And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.”

Revelation 22:1-7

these are the days: november

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I took this picture on one of the last days of October. The leaves were past peak, but still hanging on; now that November is in full swing, nearly all the trees are bare. The changing of the clocks seems to have sounded the knell of winter’s arrival, despite several more weeks of fall ahead. Suddenly there are only six weeks left of the year 2019, and an entirely new decade is around the bend.

It’s in the midst of all this constant moving and changing that the days have turned, for me, into the days of learning how to stop.

Did you know that the word “Sabbath” (or “Shabbat”) comes from the verb in Hebrew that means “to stop”? It’s not quite the same as the verb “to rest,” the way it normally appears in our Bibles. God didn’t “rest” from His labors so much as He “stopped.” Sabbath is an invitation to stop. To cease. To quit trying to carve out our own survival and success for a pause to remember that the real source of survival and success is Someone else.

Between my regular job, my writing, and various other projects, I got caught trying to avoid Shabbat for a bit too long and spent a few days sick in bed because of it. Even during my fifteen minute breaks at work, I’ve had a bad habit of keeping my brain busy by checking my email or listening to a podcast. It can be so hard to submit to a full stop - to release the need to find my value in my productivity and performance for even a few minutes a day and just be still.

So these are the days of learning how to stop. To sit and look out the window when I have five spare minutes before I need to leave for work. To sew quilt binding in silence when I’d normally want music or a podcast or a TV show to fill that space in my brain. To follow God’s example and not only rest, but fully cease, as an acknowledgement that the work I’ve done is good and that the Provider is even better.

Suggested Thinking