Happy New Year!

January greeted me with a sprinkle of snow and a shower of sickness. I haven’t been feeling well for several weeks, but God is faithful and I’m on the mend. When you think of me, pray for my health as my constitution has descended below the level of a Victorian child. 😂

I love January. It’s a time of new hopes and fresh starts, a time to take a breath and try again. I don’t set a lot of New Year’s Resolutions, but I do enjoy choosing a new word of the year and trying some new things. This year, the trying has made me thirsty…

This week, I was blessed to work as a greeter during a series of worship services focused around renewing the heart. Hundreds of people sang praise to the Lord and listened as the pastor preached sermons reminding them to present their lives as a living sacrifice before God (Romans 12:1). 

While I didn’t get to participate in the worship service as a member, there was an evening when I did step into the room to listen to the worship. It was beautiful. 

Some people stood and some sat. Some knelt on the floor and some raised their arms up toward heaven. 

As I leaned against the wall and soaked in the sound of 800 voices promising the Lord that they would put their trust in Him alone, I was struck by the beauty of so many people worshipping all together, loving the Lord, coming back again and again.

When we know God, we only become more thirsty for Him. We want more of Him. It is the most beautiful thirst in creation. 

Last week, I did a lot of writing. Some friends and I launched into a little competition in which we tested who could write the most words in one week. My team lost, which was a little disappointing, but that wasn’t the important thing. The point was that I took that time and wrote 10,000 words on a project I’ve been thinking about over the past couple of months. And while none of what I wrote is particularly presentable, it got me going. I noticed a change in myself as I wrote in big chunks. Now, I don’t want to stop. I want more. 

I’m reading the Bible in a year in 2025, using The Bible Recap as a resource. I’ve never read the Bible in a year with a plan before, always preferring to go super slowly and study in depth, soaking it in as thoroughly as possible. 

But while it isn’t absurd to take two months to read the book of Isaiah, it is a little crazy that it took me three months to read 1 Corinthians. 

All that to say, I wasn’t sure about reading the Bible in a year. After all, it’s four chapters a day. That’s like, a lot of content compared to what I was used to reading, even when Jeremiah had really long chapters. 

But you know what? I’ve loved it. 

And I’ve noticed a change in me as a result of the volume of Scripture I’m consuming. 

Now that I think about it, I noticed this when I read the Old Testament a couple of years ago. I read it in a very short period of time, and realized that when you’re drowning in Scripture, it starts to get inside of you. When you do a lot of a thing, you want more of that thing. 

But drowning in Scripture isn’t just how much you are reading, but how long you are spending reading and thinking about it. 

The first portion of Psalm 1 describes a righteous man and what his habits are like. He does not mingle with sinners, etc, but his delight is in the law. The Psalm then states that he meditates on it day and night. 

Personally, I think there is a direct correlation there. His delight is in the law because he meditates on it so much. He is consumed by it. He spends a lot of time invested in it. 

A friend once asked me how to trust God. My response was get to know him. At least in my experience, to know Him is to trust Him. And I think the same goes for Scripture. To read Scripture is to love it more. The more we read it, the more often we read it, the more of it we read, the more we will love it, and the more we will see it impacting us as the Holy Spirit reaches out and touches our hearts with it. 

So whether I’m listening to people sing, or writing a lot of words, or reading a lot of Scripture, I’m noticing this month that a lot of something makes me thirsty for more. And that’s a good thing.

“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.” Psalm 63:1 & 3