"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble." – Helen Keller
Does prayer come easily to you? It doesn’t always come easily to me.
I must not be the only one, because there are a few different prayer models out there to help us when our thoughts are tied up in knots, our minds are blank, or we simply don’t know what to say to God.
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I didn’t set out to copy the entire Bible by hand. And yet, somehow I am. Here’s my story.
How It Started: Back in 2018, I was searching for a new way to engage with the Bible on a daily basis. A friend of mine had created 36 months of topical Scripture writing lists—three years’ worth!—and I figured that I’d give it a try for a month and see if I liked it.
I did indeed like it. So I completed the entire three-year collection of passages, rarely missing a day. (I’m so thankful to my friend Debbie at The Architect and the Artist, who has allowed me to make her Scripture writing plans available here on my blog. You can download them for free from this post.)
But as I approached the end of her three-year plan, I began to panic just a wee bit. Scripture writing had become an important part of my day, and an integral part (sometimes the only part) of my daily time in the Word. I was about to run out of my three-year supply of topical verses, so I asked Debbie what she did after she completed her own Scripture writing plans. She told me that she just started copying out entire books of the Bible. (My jaw dropped, and you can find more about that story in my very first post on Scripture writing here.)
But I gave it a try. I started easy (Philippians, only four chapters), then challenged myself to see if I was really serious about this (Psalms, 150 chapters). Those two books took me about eight months, and by then I was completely hooked.
Where I Am Today: I began copying entire books of the Bible in September 2021. Four and a half years later, here’s where I am:
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Early on in the movie A Great Awakening (Sight & Sound Films, 2026), there’s a scene that unexpectedly brought tears to my eyes. The characters are a young Ben Franklin, around age 12, and his father, a candle maker. Mr. Franklin tells Ben (who is helping with the candles even though it clearly bores him) that among his 17 children, Ben’s birth order is special to him. He says something to him like, “Ben, you are my tenth son, my tithe given to the Lord. When you were born, I dedicated you to God.” By which he means that he’s hoping Ben will become a minister or preacher, but Ben doesn’t want to do this. Soon after, Ben is offered the chance to move to Boston to work in his brother’s print shop—and the rest is quite literally American history.
I cry pretty easily at movies, but even so, I wondered as I watched this scene: Why am I even getting weepy over this? It wasn’t because of the tender, well-acted incident between father and son, or the fact that Ben would soon be allowed to “follow his heart,” or that his father was kind and understanding rather than harsh or domineering.
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When I became a Christian at age thirty, I knew I needed a lot of work, so I looked forward to the ways that I would surely be changed as a result of my new life in Christ. Some changes came easily—cleaning up my speech and stopping swearing, for example. But most of the other changes that happened to me (and there were many) took much more effort and much more time, such as finally being able to forgive family members for past hurts. As I grew in Christian maturity, I realized that all of these changes and challenges are a part of the lifelong sanctification process.
And of course, that sanctification process isn’t over yet. I still need a whole lot of refining, as we all do, in order to be holy, or set apart for God: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:14-16).
Recently I was reminded of three challenging, life-changing quotes that aren’t from the Bible, but are particularly convicting in terms of how Christians are set apart for God. They touch on areas of our lives that we don’t especially like to think about or talk about freely with others:
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I never read The Chronicles of Narnia as a child. In fact, I don’t think I had ever even heard of C. S. Lewis until I read Mere Christianity when I was nearly thirty.
Ten years later, I had three (almost four) children, and I read The Chronicles of Narnia aloud to them during lunch, as a part of our homeschool day—one of a very long line of lunchtime read-alouds with my kids. When I read Narnia that first time, my brain was partly engaged in the story as you would expect, but partly I was in teacher mode as I was with all read-alouds: Do they know the meaning of this word? Do I need to explain this scene? Is this sentence something I need to verbally edit as I go? Can we get to the end of this chapter before the 5-year-old runs out of food? When I close the book, is there anything we ought to talk about before they leave the table?
So yeah, I was distracted. I remember appreciating the story, though, and discussing the Christian allegory aspect with my children.
In the Narnia books, grown-ups are not allowed to enter Narnia from our world (the exception is that when Narnia is created, two adults are a part of that). When Narnia needs help, certain children from our world are called by Aslan to assist; then around the time they reach adolescence, they are told that they can’t return. How wonderful to be a child reading Narnia for the first time, imagining what it would be like if you, too, were one day called to assist this magical place of Talking Beasts, naiads and dryads, centaurs and fauns, and High Kings and Queens.
But alas, at my age, I’m too old for those kinds of dreams, in more ways than one. Still, I wanted to revisit Narnia as a grown-up, just for myself. Not as a teacher, not as a mom, but just for me. My questions going into this reading were (1) What would I think about the books as an adult, and (2) What affect, if any, would the reading experience have on me?
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The Christmas song that’s most likely to make me cry isn’t actually based on the Bible.
Everyone knows this song, and it’s often mocked as being overly sentimental or annoying. There was even a challenge going around a few years ago: who could go the longest without hearing it during the month of December?
There are jokes about this song, such as the one about what a sleeping newborn really needs … is a drum solo.
Still, I love “The Little Drummer Boy.” And one line in particular makes me tear up every time.
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One of the most exciting and comforting aspects of the end of the calendar year is surely the celebration of Advent, when Christians remember the first coming of Christ and anticipate the second. This season awakens a childlike and reverent wonder that’s a welcome respite from the commercialization that surrounds us during November and December.
I’ve enjoyed Advent both with my family (husband and four children) and also in a more solitary way, with my own daily Advent devotions. I’ll share both kinds of books here. I also became a Christian at age 30, and had absolutely zero previous knowledge of what Advent was or why we ought to celebrate it—so I also want to provide a few details to help those who are fairly new to the concept of the Advent season.
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Over the years that I’ve been posting and teaching about Scripture writing, many of the same questions keep popping up. One of the most common questions is this: Do men do Scripture writing, too?
The answer is yes, they absolutely do! In fact, one of the biggest misconceptions about Scripture writing is that it’s something that only women do.
I’ve often wondered … why might people assume that Scripture writing is inherently a feminine thing to do? Especially since the scribes of centuries past were virtually all male, and it was a respected position in a temple or monastery (not to mention in the military, or in the court of a nobleman or king).
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When I was in college, I worked in a mall bookstore—to this day, one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. As the assistant manager, I’d often arrive early to get some paperwork done before other employees arrived.
If you’ve ever wondered whether bookstore or library employees can read on the job, the 1980s answer is yes, to a certain extent. I often took advantage of this perk, and when I was in the store by myself, I could gravitate toward those books that I might not want others to see me reading. Alone in the store, with 15 minutes to do with as I pleased, I often headed for the Religion and Bibles section.
I wasn’t a Christian at the time, or even especially spiritual. As a young child, I’d read a 10-volume children’s Bible that had caused me to declare Jesus as my savior, but that commitment only lasted a few years. By the time I worked in the bookstore, God was a distant memory and Jesus was far from my mind and my life … or so it seemed.
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“What is it that keeps you from looking for God?”
When I heard this question in a sermon last week, I had just seen an excellent live performance of Dear Evan Hansen a mere 12 hours before. If you’re one of the many who have seen this show, you know the song that’ll be in your head for days: “You Will Be Found” (lyric video here).
The main character in this musical, Evan Hansen, is a high school student who has social anxiety and great difficulty fitting in. He feels awkward and out of place most of the time. During the course of the show, he struggles greatly with the idea of being found—not necessarily because he feels lost, but because he feels invisible. So I suppose that the theme is not just about being found, but being seen. And really, aren’t they just two sides of the same coin?
Evan has no true friends, so when he sings these lyrics, they’re especially poignant:
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Great and Noble Tasks 