Reflections on Week One of Galatians

I continue to be amazed at how this practice deepens my love for and understanding of God’s word. I love learning new techniques to further stretch me in my bible reading, which is why I was particularly interested in a video teaching my husband received from a friend a while back.

The gist of the video is that we need about 10 minutes of reading to warm us up in order to be fully primed for our designated reading portion of the word. When I first heard this I thought, “this is the antidote for reading out of context.” And it surely is. In addition to reading larger chunks of the Bible to get ourselves warmed up, it was also suggested that the reading be done out loud, and let me tell you, that has been a game changer for me. Having said all that, I was delighted to come across an article in The Atlantic this morning about the benefits of reading out loud. I love it when the secular and the sacred are in agreement with one another!

So what has that looked like in regard to my daily scripture journaling? On June 1 I read Galatians 1: 1-5 out loud, slowly, and then copied those verses into my journal, the following are my reflections:

​*Jesus rescued me from this present evil age according to the will of the Father.

​* the Father intended to rescue (me).

​*Jesus is the means of rescue.

​*people who have been rescued live in endless gratitude to the one who rescued them,

​ do I live that way toward God my Father?

​*do I fail to live in gratitude because I don’t fully understand what I have been rescued

​ from? I think so. Jesus open my eyes to the truth of my rescue, to the full weight and

​ magnitude of what was to be my fate without your intervention. How do I apply this to

​ my life today?

​*God the Father planned this rescue for one purpose and one purpose alone, His Glory!

​ My rescue and all of its benefits are only ever meant to glorify God! I am not the hero of

​ the story!

On June 2 I started at the beginning, reading verses 1-5 out loud again but continuing on through verse 10, then day 3 through verse 17, day 4 through verse 24… you get the idea. My plan is to keep doing this through June 30 at which point I will read the entire book of Galatians out loud before journaling the final verses.

You may be wondering, does that really make a difference? I think so. As I daily dig deeper into a few verses, like what I journaled above, each of those tidbits get added together. I think of it like a recipe. If you took my banana bread recipe and ate each ingredient separately you probably wouldn’t think it was all that tasty, but when you blend them all together it’s delicious. Granted, there are individual ingredients that are tasty on their own, just like there are bible verses that we can pull out individually for encouragement. But to fully taste we need them to be taken together. I think reading aloud, adding sections daily, is like that.

Give it a try, you have nothing to lose and you may find that it’s as satisfying as a good cup of coffee to go with that banana bread!