Journaling through Jonah

I had a lot of fun journaling through Jonah. This is a story that I believe every Christian knows well, but it's good to read through the well-known stories again every now and then, because you forget the details, and you can always get more our of a story, no matter how well you know it.

Jonah 1&2 - God answers prayers

For the giant fish I didn't want to draw a whale, I wanted something really scary. I did a web search for prehistoric fish and came up with this monster. The page, as usual, is watercolour pencils, black Micron pen and a while gel pen.

Jonah 3&4 - Our God is abounding in love

I am not a Bible journalist...

Something's been bugging me for a while and I want to get it off my chest. The term "Bible journalist" really grates with me.

I am a journalist - I trained in journalism. I can collect facts and wrote them down for other people to read in a general impersonal way. Journalism is impersonal, but when I journal in my Bible it's very very personal. What I do in my Bible isn't journalism, it's journalling, so I'm a Bible journaller.

Haggai 2:8-9 & Joshua 24:15 - Praying for Glencoe

“The silver is mine and the gold is mine,” declares the Lord Almighty. “The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,” says the Lord Almighty. “And in this place I will grant peace,” declares the Lord Almighty.’

 - Haggai 2:8-9

Over the last few years I've been regularly visiting Glencoe Outdoor Centre in Scotland - a Christian outward bound-type activity centre. My husband worked there many years ago and has said it's somewhere he wouldn't mind working again, and we got engaged on a visit there in 2013, so it's a special place for both of us.

This week we received an email update from the centre asking for urgent prayer, as a major source of gift income, received since 2011, will cease in the next three months. This gift income has averaged just over £30,000 annually over the past 4 years and its loss appears to make the centre no longer financially viable.  

I journalled this page as I was thinking and praying about the future of the centre as part of a 25 hour prayer day organised by the staff. The verse from Haggai was one of four included in the email, and was the one that jumped out at me the most. The other verse, from Joshua, is one that I've always associated with the centre, and I believe is written underneath a picture of the cente which hangs in its hallway.

The work the centre does with children in particular is wonderful, and it's the only centre that I know of that combines outdoor activities with faith content (although I'm sure there are others). I am praying that God will provide the finances for the centre to continue, the wisdom of the leaders there to know how best to steward the money they get in and whether they need to change the way they do some things in order to be more financially viable, and if the centre does close (although I really hope this won't happen) that God will send along someone with similar aims to continue to work there.

The image I journalled is of the centre itself in watercolour pencils. The green text at the side simply reads 'Lord, please bless Glencoe Outdoor Centre'. The washi tape at the bottom seemed appropriate - Trust in Him - Rejoice in the Lord - God is good.

Mark 5:21-43 - Jesus heals the bleeding woman

A large crowd followed and pressed round him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realised that power had gone out from him. He turned round in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’
‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, “Who touched me?”’
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’

 - Mark 5:24b-34

I used my own hand as the model for the picture. I could have copied images from the internet, but I wanted to make this personal. I need healing from certain things just as much as that woman did, so I need to reach out to Jesus too.

Other pictures I've seen of this verse show the woman holding on to Jesus' robe, but the passage doesn't say she grabbed Him, just that she touched the edge of His clothes. I imagine that the crowd was so busy that she couldn't get close enough to grab hold of anything. Her faith was so strong that she didn't feel she needed to get any closer than just a touch to be healed.

Digressing slightly, there is a danger of reading this passage and falling into the trap of thinking that anyone will be healed if their faith is strong enough, or conversely, that people who aren't healed don't believe enough. I think this is a dangerous theology to hold. Sometimes people aren't healed for reasons that God only knows. Sometimes this can lead to much greater things - look at the ministry of Joni Eareckson Tada if you want an example of this. (An excellent interview with Joni is here - I highly recommend reading it.)

In the margin of the Bible page I picked out some key phrases from the passage and wrote them out, underlining them in the text as well.

I used my watercolour pencils for the image, and the lettering was done with Pitt Artist pens.

Joshua 2 - Learning from Rahab

Rahab and the spies
So they went and entered the house of a prostitute named Rahab and stayed there.
... she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them under the stalks of flax she had laid out on the roof.
‘I know that the Lord has given this land to you ... the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.'
'...we will treat you kindly and faithfully when the Lord gives us the land.’
And she tied the scarlet cord in the window.

- Joshua 2 (selected verses)

I decided to look at some of the women of the Bible recently and, although I wasn't intending to journal about them, I did get inspired by the story of Rahab.

I recently bought the Complete Guide to Bible Journaling by Joanne Fink & Regina Yoder and it has pages of templates and ideas in the back. One of them was a town scene with a heart hanging from one of the windows. It reminded me of the story of Rahab hanging the scarlet thread from her window. I copied the image into my Bible and coloured the town in drab colours, making Rahab's house the only bright spot in the image, signifying Rahab's faith in the spies' God.

The lettering reads 'Rahab recognised God, responded and was saved'. I love that Rahab was paying enough attention that she saw something good in the spies, acted to help them, and as a result was saved (and became one of the ancestors of Jesus!). She is also a perfect example of an imperfect person being used for God's purposes, which I love. It's a great reminder that God can use anyone if He chooses to, and that even the most messed up of us can still be saved.

The art was quite simple, but I enjoyed doing it. I used pencil crayons to colour the image and Pitt Artist pens to do the line art and lettering.

Mark 4:21-25 - Let the light shine

A lamp on a stand
He said to them, ‘Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.’
‘Consider carefully what you hear,’ he continued. ‘With the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.’

- Mark 4:21-25

We're working through a sermon series on Mark at church at the moment, which I'm really enjoying. It's great to get more insight into what Jesus did and the context and reasons for that.

This passage appears in the middle of a series of parables, and is Jesus telling his listeners to pay attention to what they're being told, and to understand the meanings. It's been a theme as we're going through Mark that Jesus has to explain things to His disciples because they don't understand what He means.

We don't have the luxury of grabbing Jesus in person and sitting Him down to explain things to us, but we can study the Bible, read what He told other people, and spend time in prayer to get to know what He really means more. One of the things I love about Bible art journalling is that I get to spend more time sitting and reading and thinking about passages than I would if I was just reading a passage and moving on to other things. I love to find out the stories behind the stories - the context and setting for certain parables, the history of what was happening around Jesus and the disciples at the time, and how everything fits in with the rest of the Bible.

I got my inspiration from a series of templates Monica Bauer produced. I loved the stained glass effect and thought I'd give it a go. I'm not 100% satisfied with the art, but I'm happy with the overall message. The crux of the passage, to me, was 'let your light shine' - your light, in this case, being God's glory reflected through us. I know that's not the precise meaning of the passage, but it's what I got out of it. I used the image of a lamp on a tall stand, where it could be seen, and added the text above.

On a side note, looking back over my hand lettering over the last year, I'm very pleased with how much it's improved with practice!

I used a combination of Pitt Artist Pens and watercolour pencils to colour the image. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed with the markers on this image. I'm used to getting shadowing with the pens, but find it doesn't shadow so much if I use the pens over the watercolour. However... I was quite surprised to see that the yellow pen I used for the writing shadowed really badly. I managed to cover it, but it was unexpected.

Proverbs 28:1 - The righteous are as bold as a lion

The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

- Proverbs 28:1

This entry was inspied by Rebekah R Jones' Bible Art Journaling Challenge, week 3 (no link because the original challenge post has been take down).

I was in two minds about sharing this entry, which is why it's taken over a year for me to post it up here. From an art point of view I was delighted with it. It's one of the best pieces of art I've done in my Bible to date, and I liked the way the stamping came out. I also liked that the lion's eyes looked kind, as I was thinking of Aslan as a model when I was sketching. I also learned that if I'm going to prep my pages (necessary if I don't want stamping to bleed through) then I need to prep everywhere I'm going to create, or the colour will be different on the prepped to unprepped parts.

But from a spiritual/Bible study point of view I don't feel I actually got very much out of it. Maybe it was because the video that went with the challenge wasn't there to follow, so I couldn't get the extra bit of insight into the verse that I get from that usually. Maybe it was because it was only one verse and nothing more (I find Proverbs can be difficult to journal on for exactly that reason). Maybe it was because I concentrated too much on the art and wasn't really in the right place mentally when I did the entry.

Whatever the reason I've decided to not let it put me off. I'm planning to do more studies on boldness/lions, spurred on by this challenge, and see where it takes me. This entry may not have had much impact on me, but as our pastor said in his sermon this morning, little things can make all the difference to our Christian lives. This little passage could end up paving the way to all sorts of interesting insights into other passages!

What I used: White gesso, black Memento ink, Prismacolour coloured pencils, black Micron pen, selection of alphabet stamps from Dovecraft.