I wanted to write to let you know about how I started studying the Bible. I grew up going to church. In Sunday School we would learn memory verses and I had a little book that had verses from Proverbs in it that I would read. I also had a Children’s Bible that I would read through at night before I went to bed.

When I was in about the 6^th grade, my mom bought a One-Year Bible. I hadn’t seen one before. I asked if I could look at it, and it was a Bible that was printed in a format of daily devotionals. This was around the year 1994, and it wasn’t long after that before I started hearing people talking about the end of the world. There were people saying that the world was going to end in the year 2000 and there was a lot of stress about Y2K – a fear that computers were going to stop working when they had to change from 99 to 00 for the year 2000.

I was only about 12 years old at the time, and I don’t know if I had heard before that Jesus was going to be returning. If I had heard about it, it was only mentioned in a way where I did not understand how serious it would be – although it is not supposed to be terrifying to us. At Youth Group, I saw some sensationalized videos of the rapture where people were disappearing and it was very scary. I started developing a lot of stress about it. One night I was having a panic attack during a thunderstorm because I had heard someone at school say that Jesus was going to return during a thunderstorm. I knew that Jesus was probably not returning at that moment, but I realized then how much the stress of it was affecting me. My mom asked me what was wrong, and I explained that I was distressed because people were saying that Jesus was returning and I didn’t know if what they were saying was true or not. She said that Jesus was going to return, but that she didn’t know much about how it would happen. She thought the things I was hearing were sensationalized, though.

So now I knew it was true that Jesus was returning, but what about everything else that was being said? Was it in the Bible? I remember that particular feeling of uncertainty I felt when I didn’t know if those things were true or not. How would I know if something someone said was in the Bible really was in there or not if I had never read the Bible myself? God reminded me of that One-Year Bible, and I could feel that He was leading me to start reading through the Bible.

Sometime soon after that thunderstorm, my mom took me to the bookstore after school. I went to the Bible section and got a book that said it was about Revelation. I went home and went out and sat down on the deck with my border collie, and started reading through Revelation and the study guide. I knew I wasn’t understanding everything I was reading, but I felt God’s presence there with me as I was reading through His word. I felt a sense of peace. Whatever was going to happen over the next few years, God was going to be there with us. I also noticed that Revelation didn’t say anything specific about the world ending in the year 2000. As I kept reading, I wasn’t sure if the study guide I had bought about Revelation was accurate or not. The Bible I was reading in was an NIV Zondervan Study Bible, so I started reading through those study notes.

After I finished reading Revelation, I wanted to keep reading through the Bible daily. So I started reading through the One-Year Bible. Not long after I started reading through it, I read Matthew 24:36, in which Jesus says about the time when the world will end, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” I felt a lot of comfort from that verse and was able to stop having as much stress about the world ending. I really enjoyed feeling God’s presence with me as I read through the Bible, so after I got home from school, I would go outside with my border collie and would read through my daily devotional in the One-Year Bible.

When I was 16 years old, I started getting sick. I had to homeschool my last 2 years of high school and was not able to finish college. It took 11 years to get the diagnosis of Eosinophilic Esophagitis and Gastroparesis. During those years, I kept doing my daily quiet time. I used the NIV Zondervan Study Bible that I used to read Revelation in 1994, and read through the study notes for the whole Bible. That took many years. And after I had finished that, I started reading the Matthew Henry commentary and other commentaries and books. I would try to be sure to have quiet time for 30 minutes to 1 hour a day. And a lot of times I would play several hymns also. It made such a difference in my life to have a daily quiet time, so I’m trying to build a resource here on this website for people to use during their quiet times. There will be posts people can read for a devotional time and hymns for people to listen to.

After I got the diagnoses of EoE and Gastroparesis, I was still having a lot of symptoms. In 2012, I was diagnosed with Mind Body Syndrome and started working with a counselor who used a holistic approach. I wrote in my post How to Use Imagery from Hymns in Christian Meditation – Learning to Live by Faith about how she used guided imagery and meditation. So it was in 2012 that I learned to meditate using guided imagery, hypnosis, and mindfulness techniques. During that time, God brought to my mind all of the imagery He has given us throughout the Bible. So I started incorporating Biblical imagery into my meditation time and found it to be a very powerful experience. I’ve recently started writing posts on here about Christian meditation and look forward to continuing to share with you what I have learned. I hope you will find it to be healing and helpful.

So I started reading the Bible to find out what it said about Jesus’ return, and I have learned about it over the years and hope to post about it on here in the future. There are many beautiful hymns that are about Jesus’ second coming. We cannot know when Jesus will return, but as Christians we are supposed to be living with the expectant hope of meeting our Savior face to face, whether that happens after experiencing death at the end of earthly life or whether that happens if we get to experience Jesus’ return during our lifetime. That is how Christians have lived since His ascension – waiting to see Jesus. And we do not need to fear death or Jesus’ second coming because we have received a pardon for our sins and are reconciled to God through Christ.

So again, I’m looking forward to posting about Christian meditation and about what I am learning in my daily quiet times. And I am still hoping to get the website design changed to where there is a menu so that the devotionals will be posted on one page and the hymn recordings will be posted on another page.