Spiritual Scrapbook, part I

This is the beginning of a blogging series in which I will share the talks I gave at Shiloh Bible Camp at a Women's Retreat. On Friday night I shared my testimony. While I was making my notes I read an article about "How to Give Your Testimony." It said I should describe my life before I was saved and then tell you how my life is different now. Well...I was four when I trusted the Lord. I didn't have a lot of time to develop a long list of pre-Jesus habits. Since I can't tell that kind of a testimony, I'm sharing my spiritual scrapbook with you instead. I'm not really a scrapbooker. I have a lot of supplies but I haven't really done anything with them for years. Of course I do take pictures of my children and at Christmas time I make a calendar online and have the calendar sent to the grandparents. One of the scenes I record each year is my children jumping in a pile of leaves. We live in the desert, so we don't have a lot of autumn leaves, but there are a few, and my kids gather them up and make piles of leaves to jump in. We've done this four years in a row, and we know now that the leaves aren't there until the first week of December, and we've learned that if we see the gardener's truck parked outside we should run and take the photo before he takes away all the leaves! Because we take that picture every year, we anticipate this seasonal event and we're prepared.

Here's what happens if I'm not prepared for next season...it's the one snowy day of the year and we don't have gloves, so my oldest daughter wears a potholder while she builds a snowman.

Like the seasons outside our windows, some seasons in our souls come around again. Taking a few notes—making a spiritual scrapbook—can help us be prepared the next time.

My scrapbook is very simple: it's just verses on file cards. I'm going to share just a few pages from my spiritual scrapbook this week. Remember the physical seasons —my cold winter in Vegas might be a lot shorter than yours, but it's still winter—and in the same way, my spiritual seasons might look different from yours, but we probably have some things in common too. God's Word is full of encouragement, comfort and triumphant praise—and it can help prepare us for the coming seasons.