Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Bible study

When Your Spiritual Life Looks Like Cheerios and Sliced Red Pepper

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Every few weeks or so we announce it’s “Fend Night” around here. Usually Fend happens when Brad and I are tired of the complaints about stinky fish and laments about “Soup? Again?” Or when the cupboards contain a single stick of Juicy Fruit and a can of refried beans.

That’s when I’ll declare, “Iiiiiiiiiiit’s Fend!” and the kids cheer because they know what it means: Fend for yourself, people. You’re on your own. Scrap around, figure it out. Scrape together what you can. Make the best in less-than-ideal circumstances. The only requirement of Fend is that their dinner include one serving of vegetable. Usually the kids have a bowl of cereal and a side of sliced red pepper. Classic Fend.

I realized this week that sometimes my spiritual life looks a little bit like Fend. The truth is, sometimes I have to make do with less-than-ideal circumstances. I don’t always have the proper array of spiritual ingredients: morning quiet time, Bible study, small group, worship, prayer.  Sometimes I have to put together a smattering of what’s available, when and where I can grab it. Sometimes my spiritual life looks a little slap-dash, like Cheerios and sliced red pepper.

Such is the case with my morning quiet time. During the last two years I’ve carved out a half hour or so every morning to read the Bible and pray before the kids get up and bedlam descends. That all changed, though, when Noah transitioned to middle school this year, which has a one hour earlier start time than Rowan’s elementary school. Suddenly my morning quiet time was disrupted by lunch making and chopping lettuce for the pet lizard. Suddenly my morning quiet time wasn’t very quiet.

For a while I simply bailed on the quiet Bible study time. Getting up an hour earlier was not an option. Even the good Lord knows I morph into Medusa Mother when I am short on sleep, morning Gospels or not. So I slept in for a couple of weeks. But then, as I settled into the new drop-off and pick-up school routine, I discovered a new sliver of time – 20 minutes between Noah’s pick-up and Rowan’s.

And so, for now, I Fend. I make do with what I have. Quiet time in my car isn’t ideal. It’s awkward as all get-up to write with my prayer journal splayed out over my steering wheel. Thanks to Nebraska’s volatile weather, I’m alternately sweating or shivering in the driver’s seat. Plus, half the time I forget my glasses and am forced to squint beady-eyed at the tiny NLT script. I’m considering purchasing a pair of reading glasses to keep in the mini-van. Clearly I am now officially old.

You know what, though? For all its inconveniences, Bible study in the mini-van works for now. It’s good enough. And sometimes, in matters of both physical and spiritual sustenance, we simply have to pull together what’s readily available to get by. Sometimes we have to Fend in order to survive and thrive. Sometimes good-enough turns out to be more than enough.

Do you ever have to Fend in your spiritual life or otherwise? What does Fending look like for you?

Linking with Emily for Imperfect Prose and Jennifer for #TellHisStory.

It Is Not Finished: Why I Read the Bible

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“I thought you finished the Bible. Why are you reading it again?” he asks. I’m sprawled the length of the couch, my head propped on a pillow, reading glasses on my nose, the black New Living Translation in my hands. “Oh honey,” I say, craning to look at my son, Noah, “I’ll never be finished with the Bible. Just because I read it all the way through one time doesn’t mean I’m done. Every single time I read the Bible I find something new.”

I completed my first cover-to-cover read-through of the Bible, including all the begets and the endless lists of laws, just a few days before Christmas. I was definitely not on the “Bible-in-90-days” plan. More like the Bible in 690 days. It took me far longer than a year to read the Old and New Testaments, and truth be told, Revelation nearly did me in. About halfway through I said to my husband, “I may not finish. I don’t think I’m going to make it through Revelation.” But I did. I don’t claim to have understood a word of that last book, but I read it. I may need to take a class.

…Will you hop over to the Lincoln Journal Star to read about why I’m not nearly finished with the Bible…I’ll see you over there…

A Different Advent: Reading the Book of Luke

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{Today I’m re-visiting a f post I wrote in 2010 for a series called “A Different Advent.” What’s cool is that two years later, we are still practicing  many of the ideas we experimented with as a family then — including the tradition I write about here today: reading through the Gospel of Luke at dinnertime.}

I laughed out loud a few weeks ago when my friend Dan recounted the first time he read the story of Jesus’ birth on Christmas Day. When his wife asked him to read the “Christmas Story,” as she referred to it, Dan was shocked to see a Bible placed in his lap. He’d assumed she’d meant ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.

I’m with Dan – this will be the first time in my 40 years that I have read the story of Jesus’ birth on Christmas Day…or even leading up to Christmas Day (aside from in church, of course).

Nearly every evening at suppertime this month we’ve read a few lines about the birth of Jesus in Luke or Matthew. It’s been a revelation for me to realize just how little I know about the details of that story. Just this week, for instance, I was surprised to read that Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus escaped to Egypt for two years to avoid King Herod, who vowed to kill baby Jesus.

I know I’ve read that detail before, but the magnitude of it never stuck with me – that just days after birthing her first child, Mary had to travel nearly 200 miles to a foreign land. Can you imagine bumping along on the back of a donkey just days after giving birth? Can you imagine raising your newborn in a foreign country where you didn’t know a soul? Can you imagine the fear, the terror of having to dash from Bethlehem in the middle of the night because a crazed king was bent on murdering your child?

That’s the beauty of reading the Bible just a few lines at a time – you can soak in the details of the story.

Often when I do my morning Bible study, I feel compelled to rush through the text, to squeeze in as much reading as my limited time will allow. It seems I simply want to “get through” the Bible in order to check it off my daily to-do list.

But because we are following an Advent devotional book, our evening readings are much more concise. We read just a handful of lines, maybe a verse or two, and then ask questions and talk about the scene for a few minutes. I’m not exactly sure what this approach is having on my kids, but for me, at least, it’s allowed me to think about and remember the details of this age-old story.

I’m eager to read the “Christmas Story” in Luke on December 25 this year. After piecing the narrative together line by line this last month, I wonder how the story will read as a whole. I wonder how the kids will react to it.

I’m keeping my expectations low – after all, these are the kids who talked about dead racoons as part of our Advent devotions last week. But I do hope that we can breathe the true Christmas Story into our celebration on December 25 and be amazed, even if only for a moment or two, that he came to be with us.

Do you have any Advent traditions you follow from year to year? Have you tried anything new this year?

The God of All Comfort {and a giveaway!}

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I am thrilled to introduce you to Donna Pyle today. I first “met” Donna through Books & Such Literary Agency (Rachelle is her agent, too). Since then, though, Donna has become a faithful reader and commenter here, and I am so grateful for her encouragement and support. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite so positive and affirming as Donna, and I know you will see that, too, when you read her new Bible study, The God of All Comfort.

That’s right…Beth Moore isn’t the only one who can write a stellar Bible study that will transform you and grow your faith! Donna’s book is beautifully written, full of real stories about real people and the ways in which God has brought comfort, security and joy to even the most desperate situations.

Be sure to visit Donna at her blog, Hydrated Living, check out the website for her ministry, Artesian Ministries and follow her on Twitter. Her Bible study, The God of All Comfort, is available for purchase at Amazon and Concordia Publishing House.

Donna is also graciously doing a giveaway for Graceful readers. See details at the bottom of this post. We’ll announce the winner here on Monday, September 10.

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Michelle, thanks so much for hosting me to wrap up the launch blog tour for my new Bible study, The God of All Comfort. 

When I first wrote this study about five years ago, I was happily married and life was going along just fine. Life was comfortable. God was blessing and growing my ministry in incredible ways.

Then on December 1, 2009, everything changed forever. My marriage abruptly ended after heartbreaking secrets came out, and I felt as if I’d been blindsided by a train. I share more of that story in this Bible study as we dig into the issue of forgiveness.

A year ago, Concordia Publishing House approached me to expand this study into a full-blown, 8-week small group study geared toward women. But this study would be very different than anything God had led me to write before.

This Bible study is story driven from the lives of Christians who have been blindsided, received God’s ultimate comfort, and go on today to live productive lives in His grace, love, and forgiveness. From stories of abuse, divorce, loss, betrayal, spiritually mismatched marriage, anger, cancer, children serving in the military, alcoholism, and much more, chances are many women will find themselves or someone they love in these stories.

And as these stories unfold, so does God’s amazing comfort as we see in real time how God spoke His ultimate comfort into heartbreaking situations to redeem what was lost. I pray women dig deep into this study and share those life-changing truths with others.

If you have suffered, this study is for you. It’s such a privilege to serve you and dig in the Word with you. I pray God outrageously blesses everyone who works through this study and brings them His comfort.
 
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Donna would love to give this gift basket to one Graceful reader (we’ll announce the winner on Monday). The gift basket contains:
  • A signed copy of The God of All Comfort
  • $50 Visa Gift card
  • $15 iTunes Gift card
  • Starbucks coffee
  • mug with book logo

To enter: Subscribe to this blog (if you already subscribe, even better!) and leave a comment below to enter the drawing. For extra entries, please share this on Facebook and Twitter. Let us know you did, so we can give you credit!



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