Today we are writing a single blog entry, using the combined brains of Elizabeth and Allison. Frightening! We wanted to break a little bit and discuss our progress and experience with blogging and reading. This week we have found it really challenging to pull something from 2 Kings to specifically focus in on. If you happen to read 2 Kings in your spare time this week and find something noteworthy, please enlighten us...we'd love to hear your thoughts. With that said, we'll share with you some of our experiences.
Experience A: Reading through the Old Testament has reminded us that this was the scripture that Jesus and his disciples were raised hearing. The Old Testament is filled with stories of faithful (and unfaithful) people who encouraged and guided the Jewish people forward in their lives. The people of the New Testament perhaps knew the stories of Deborah, Saul, Jonathan, David, Samuel, and Solomon the way we have grown to know the stories of Jesus, John the Baptist, and Peter.
Experience B: We have found the Old Testament to be a large story book of faithful, unfaithful, heroic, antagonistic people. We have been able to know more about people that aren't often talked about in church. Some of these people could be great models for today's faithful people. These people stuck with God, they wrestled with Him, they asked questions, and they repented. They kept God in close company in all that they did. It has been super cool to enter into the lives of these people through their stories. In this, we have found that their stories are often our stories...or at least pretty similar.
Experience C: We have realized the importance of reading and blogging together. This experience has forced us to keep up with reading...even though we're not perfect at it...and hold each other accountable with our reading and blogging. We have seen how important it is to not just read alone, but to talk through the readings. We have appreciated hearing each others insight on the reading we do. If we took the text word for word and held our own personal meaning to the text, we may miss the point completely. When reading together, we're able to ask questions, share thoughts, laugh at the odd scripture verses, and discuss what may/may not be happening. How awesome is that?! Scripture comes to life through discussion! Reading is more fun when we can anticipate an exciting conversation at the end of the week. Most importantly we know that God is with us along this reading/blogging journey and we have truly enjoyed that.
In conclusion, we have had a fun month and a half and we look forward to our continued journey through scripture. In the next couple of weeks, both Allison and myself are venturing off to camp with our youth groups and we are not likely to keep up as well with our reading...let's just be honest! SOOOO, that means next time you read our blog you will hear of the faith experiences we will have over the next week or so. I hope you will stay tuned! If not, we will be very sad. :( BUT, we will pick back up to our normal pace in 2 weeks.
Peace Out from your sisters in Christ,
~Allison and Elizabeth
