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    Writing in the Margins: Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible
    Writing in the Margins: Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible
    Writing in the Margins: Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible
    Ebook227 pages2 hours

    Writing in the Margins: Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible

    By Lisa Nichols Hickman

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    About this ebook

    No other time-honored spiritual practice is as immediate, raw, and
    engaged with Scripture as writing--responding to God--in the margins of
    the Bible. Composers like Bach to theologians like Barth, botanists and
    saints--all have written their thoughts directly in their Bibles. In
    doing so they engaged their fullest selves with our most significant
    text.

    Some people have lived with Scripture all their lives and yet feel
    estranged from it. This book inspires a new encounter with “the living
    Word”--and jump-starts a deep, creative, and hands-on approach to
    reading Scripture.

    As you sit, with pencil, pen, crayon, or marker in hand and Bible in
    lap, at whatever edges of life you are living within, now that
    invitation is yours. The creative practice of writing in the margins
    creates a divine conversation that transforms and guides. Meet God in
    the margins. Let God shape your character from the living interaction on
    the pages of your Bible.

    Writing in the Margins is a book about making connections on
    the pages of your Bible--and introduces a devotional and scriptural path
    of engagement that is life-changing.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbingdon Press
    Release dateAug 6, 2013
    ISBN9781426775864
    Writing in the Margins: Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible
    Author

    Lisa Nichols Hickman

    Lisa Nichols Hickman is a pastor at New Wilmington Presbyterian Church, author of Writing in the Margins: Connecting with God on the Pages of Your Bible and adjunct teacher at Westminster College in the Religion Department. She writes regularly for Faith and Leadership online magazine as well as its Call and Response blog. Recent articles appear in The Huffington Post, in The New Castle News and in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette. She lives in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.

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      Book preview

      Writing in the Margins - Lisa Nichols Hickman

      INTRODUCTION

      Writing in the Margins began with a prayer.

      After the death of Rich Gordon, his family entrusted me with his Bible. I quickly learned he was a margin writer. For years I thought about the notes and prayers he had written into scripture. I began to wonder how this scriptural discipline he loved and was shaped by might be shared with others so they could learn from him as well.

      When I started researching to discover more about margin writing, there were plenty of examples of medieval illuminated manuscripts. As I poured through images on the Internet, there were a few examples of notes and prayers people had written into their Bibles. But it was rare to find any color. One young teen drew rainbows and birds into the Psalms. Another mom posted a photo of her toddler’s pink crayon scribbled into the mom’s devotional Bible. A precious mark for sure.

      Now when you Google writing in the margins of your Bible you will discover an array of words, colors, prayers, images, artwork, paint, joy. You’ll find journalers, scrapbookers, and margin writers who have discovered how the Holy Spirit can meet them in a creative process in the margins of their Bibles. Something has happened!

      Just over a year ago, I received an e-mail from Shanna Noel, a young woman bursting with creativity in California. In her e-mail, she explained how she always went to church and carried her Bible with her, but she never felt close to God in scripture. One day she looked at her scrapbooking supplies and took a second look at her Bible. She picked up her paint and glue and stickers and set to work. She felt free. Even more so, she felt the Holy Spirit.

      That night she posted the image to Pinterest. Her margin journaling went viral. She woke up the next morning to five hundred e-mails in her inbox. Her first thought was, Everyone is going to hate me for doing this to my Bible. Instead, she found the opposite to be true. Others felt free as well. They had been given permission to let the living Word of scripture come alive to them in a new way.

      Within the month, Shanna began the Journaling Bible Community on Facebook. Now there are close to 30,000 members. Through the group, individuals have found spiritual growth in the solitary practice of Bible journaling. And, they have found deep community in sharing the process and prayer with each other across the Internet. In addition, many have found opportunities for deeper service; ministry in their local communities that is kindled by the margin practice.

      When I wrote over five years ago, The invitation of this book is, at its simplest, to pick up a pen and write in the blank spaces of your Bible, I never could have imagined the growth and power this movement would have. I could never have imagined that writing in the margins of our Bibles would meet the scrapbooking world. I could never have imagined that now, in 2016, five of the top twenty bestsellers on Amazon are adult coloring books. This scriptural discipline of taking pen, marker, gelato, and/or paint to the margin of scripture is creating places of joy, creativity, and identity in people’s daily lives.

      Consider financial analyst Sally Sulcove, mother of two, whose life was so full with work and parenting and teaching Sunday school that she realized she herself needed to carve out a space to meet God. She put her art supplies on her dining room table and now, after a daily practice for the past year, she says, My life has slowly been reordered by the practice. Her woodworking husband, who built her a homemade china cabinet, discovered the china removed and the art supplies installed. Her blog http://journalingthebible.com shares the journey. Through Bible journaling, Sally has deepened her faith.

      Cartoonist and pastor Wes Molebash found in his inbox one day a note from a friend to a Bible journaling blog. He realized his love for scripture and his love for drawing could come together in a new way. He says, I’ve loved drawing cartoons ever since I was a kid, so being able to use my art as a way to understand and worship God through Bible study is absolutely awesome! I asked Wes what he’s learned about scripture in a new way through the practice. He explained, "Bible journaling has caused me to be more observant when reading Scripture. Not only am I trying to listen to what God is telling me through the Word, but I’m also trying to identify visual ideas for a drawing. This has caused certain things to stand out to me more than previous cursory readings of the Bible. For instance, in Nehemiah I was especially intrigued by the urim and thumim, as well as the sukkot used for the Feast of Booths. I did extra-biblical study of these items. They really fascinated me and shed new light on the practices they’re associated with in the text." Wes illustrated those items into his margins creating a cartoon from the text of Nehemiah. Through Bible journaling, Wes has found at the playful intersection of studying scripture and cartooning a deepened love.

      These testimonies matter. One more to share, I’ll let Erika Kosterlitzky tell hers in her own words:

      I had seen friends posting about Bible journaling on social media, but never seriously considered doing it myself, even though I consider myself a creative person. But one night a verse came to me, and I was inspired. I was at a goodbye party for a long-time church member who had done so much for so many ministries, and all these friends of hers were telling amazing stories about her. I went home and journaled the Well done, good and faithful servant verse from Matthew. I wrote the words into my regular Bible and it was just simple lettering with a bit of color added. Over the next few weeks I added a handful more

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