Just Be… Good Enough

When the shapes aren’t touching, I prayed for boundaries. When they are, I prayed for family. When they switch colours, I prayed to be encouraged. I chose a tangle I struggle with to pray that I would remember the experiences God has given to prepare me for each day and that I would trust Him with tomorrow.

Maybe you as a reader need to read today that you are good enough already. No need to prove it… just be.

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100 Days Project – Day 3

When collecting verses for this project, a friend gave me Proverbs 5:6 or something about trusting God… but when I looked it up, this was the result. Taken completely out of context… and I mean really out of context, it reminds me that we don’t always see the path God intends… trusting is difficult! (see what I did there? I looped back to the intended encouragement).

Comment with ideas on naming this tangle please!

100 Day Project – Day 2

Today’s verse is a pretty well-known and often quoted within Christian circles as an encouragement. Here it is with the two versus around it (my journaling Bible is ESV version):
“¹⁰ For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare^[a] and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.

The first thing I noticed was “I” – 5 times… and after “says the Lord”, it reminded me to pay attention to what the Lord is saying…

The second thing I noticed was seventy years of exile in Babylon…

Here is my paraphrase – the Lord is saying, after you have lived outside of what you expected or what you were promised for a very long time, then I will visit. While visiting, I will fulfill the promise made because I know more than you do about things. I know what true welfare is and I am future and hope. Knowing this about me, let’s talk – I will listen.

Context makes a difference for sure and I can imagine that I would need to go outside of Jeremiah 29 and even Jeremiah as a book to explore full context. Either way, I am challenged by God speaking. I can think of a handful of times where I was oblivious to God and He did some rather unique things to get my attention.

So… for today’s tangle, I’m calling “Ii” I starting with the capital I and added another and another always branding off the first. Then I added the small i intermingled. This represents God first, me second… but also to be immersed in Him and what He is saying. Additionally, since I was given a list of scripture and colours associated, I intentionally used only black and blue and below is the context for those colours – I highlighted what I thought of for the verses.

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I hope that when I hear/read/see/feel “the Lord says”, I am able to take it in and respond with prayer… and that He may speak to you also – moment by moment.

100 Day Project – Day 1

Today marks the first day of a #100daysproject with my cousin-in-law Jacquelyn. I thought it would be a great way for each of us to use our own unique approach to art to intentionally create.

100 Days of Verses Tangled

For awhile I have been thinking about how to incorporate faith and tangling together. To that end, I am using the 100 days to explore the possibility of finding tangles out of versus from the Bible. If I get really creatively stumped, I will use an existing tangle and try to re-imagine it or do what is called a tangleation.

I was very surprised to see how fast a tangle came for day one when I read Psalm 91:1
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

I started thinking through and was very drawn to the heading of the psalm at first – as shown in the image below. But soon, I started reflecting on an art class I had with @JessicaRupp this afternoon on positive and negative space and how it relates to how the Father sees us. Shadow can often be seen as dark, but when used on a hot day, it represents shade, or shelter from the draining nature of the sun. Additionally, when I think of Psalm 139:12 and how David says that “even the darkness will not be dark to you”, I remember that God is in the shadow too, not just the light.

I hope to reflect further on what God might be enlightening me to in terms of positive and negative space, refuge and fortress, passive and aggressive… and resting/abiding in His shadow.

If you use the new tangle, let me know and please do comment with some more verses I can use – I only have 5 more ready to go out of 100. 🙂

July 29, 2013 “Faith”

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the word “faith” lately and how it is misused. I am taken back to an English project I did in OAC on the very thing. I spoke about how you can put your faith in different things and what having faith means. Recently, I have heard faith being used in terms of “faith-based” and realized that that version is similar to “inter-faith”. So… long story short, here’s a CCEF blog post that has helped me understand the difference between having faith and having faith in Jesus. Here’s hoping that I use the word “faith” in the context closest to what I believe and not a catch-all for spirituality or multiple religions as it seems it is being used lately.

http://www.ccef.org/blog/what-faith