Spiritual Disciplines Reborn

Through the first several years of our marriage, we were pretty rigorous -- as teachers should be -- about our own spiritual development. We prayed together regularly, fellowshipped weekly with a local body of believers, participated in small group studies, and made a point of working our way through the Bible once each year together through daily readings.

When the chapter of our life called Health Issues began nearly five years ago now, we were just wrapping up our third time through the Bible. For our fourth tour of duty, we decided to do something different: copy out the scriptures by hand. Not long into this effort, the very idea of "normal life" got derailed, and every sense of predictability along with it.

Many of you have no doubt noticed how "flaky" we became, how unable we were to follow through on the simplest of commitments, how once-vital friendships came to seem as mere afterthoughts.

Relationships and such weren't the only things that suffered. For better than four years, we have also failed to maintain any kind of regular spiritual disciplines. It's all been about surviving, and about keeping Jenn in the workplace.

Well, that's changed. Our new routine is to spend a focused time in Scripture and reflection three times a week, barring interference from health emergencies. Jenn is working her way through Scripture with the help of Take a Closer Look for Women, and I've picked up my transcription of Scripture where I left off four years ago -- a third of the way through Genesis.

We're going to start sharing our studies and reflections here. Through them, I think, you'll get a better picture of where we're at and what we're dealing with.

And you'll get much more frequent updates than once every eight months!