Sunday, September 04, 2011

As I was thinking about Community Bible Study, the telephone rang. It was my new group leader for Community Bible Study calling to introduce herself. Without a visual, it did little good. I hardly know anyone in Community Bible Study, having attended only one year. She sounded like the rest of them, breezy but intentional.

It starts on Thursday morning. Problem is, Ella's school doesn't begin until next week. She offered to check whether I could stick her in their children's program for that one time. As I was thinking about her again, the phone rang with the response that I could. We'll be studying the Acts of the Apostles this term which is convenient because I just finished a Little Rock Scripture study series at my church on Acts.

The Plainsboro church is back to offering Precepts again. Same time, Thursday morning. But I'm just so done with Precepts, you know? I'm even thinking of tossing all my old workbooks. That's very telling. I never throw away any study materials, ever!

At the Princeton church, Janet will use Dr. Keller's materials to study the same book as the Plainsboro church this term, Romans. She had sent out an email about a women's mentoring program and I thought the Bible study was morphing into mentoring. So I checked into Queenship of Mary's offerings in the same time slot. I had done Great Adventure Timeline and Matthew with them two years ago. I think they did Acts of the Apostles last year but this year they are doing Revelation. So I'll be joining them. Unfortunately, I'm going to be late arriving each Tuesday by a good 15 minutes because Ella's school never starts on time!

Still, I bought a copy of Keller's materials, printed them out and intend to work on them, visiting Janet's study whenever QoM doesn't meet. In addition to the video lectures on Tuesday mornings, there's also a live person lecture on Wednesday evenings. I have to check with my husband whether I can attend those. There's a good chance I may because it begins late, 7:30. In sending Janet my regrets, I told her I felt I could deal with hanging with Catholics again.

Every other Thursday evening, Jim is reading the Psalms. My summer goal is to read through the psalms with this church, two a day. But I fell far behind in late July, so I was reading ten a day this past week and now I'm ahead! It's actually better to read several in one sitting so that patterns are more evident. I enjoy the poetic - almost romantic - retelling of Israel's dusty wilderness stories. I've tried reading with the idea that Jesus is the "singer and the subject" of the psalms, a very Reformed idea. But I'm so used to reading as if David's words are my own prayers that, with few exceptions1, I'm the singer.



1 Like, whenever my supposed "blamelessness" is mentioned, or there's talk of the "pure oil" running off my anointed head into my beard (Ps. 133:2)

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