A Background Tale

(Super-quick, roughly lettered verse. Got to the very end and totally wrote the wrong word and had to erase, which made a mess, but didn't have time to redo. Pride says, "You can't use that!" But the truth in the words is what's important, so swallowing the pride and leaving it there. *blush*)

One evening I was sitting at my desk after supper trying to muster the energy to go upstairs and get ready for bed. I was exhausted and discouraged and feeling just a wee bit overwhelmed  As I mindlessly scrolled through Facebook, a friend's post caught my eye. It was a graphic of James 5:11--

"Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

That word--steadfast--had been popping up all over the place lately. And this verse spoke deeply to my heart in its struggling state.

I pulled my Bible down from the shelf above me and flipped over to James. I read all of chapter 5, realizing as I did that not only was there much there that spoke to my personal struggles and those of our family right now, but also much that spoke to the things going on in the world around us right now that are also heavy on my heart.

I backed up and skimmed through the previous chapters, and continued to read things that resonated deeply with me and were so very timely. Bible study had been hard lately, and I had been praying about that and looking for a way to get over the hump, so to speak. As I sat reading various verses in James, almost all of them very familiar and yet new and fresh at the same time, I decided that a deep study of James was just what I needed right now.

Then I thought, "I wonder if maybe someone else might want to go through James with me--maybe we could do a Zoom study to help with accountability and provide some much-needed fellowship in the process." I began praying about it and decided I'd go ahead and quickly post on Facebook and see if there might be a lady or two who might want to join me.

God is so good and His ways are so much higher than ours. We had 16 ladies (plus a few more who wanted to but due to tech issues and/or operator error on my part weren't able to yesterday :-( ) between two sessions yesterday studying the first four verses of James. We had some glitches along the way, and it was a bit rough around the edges on my part, but it was such a blessing!! Such wonderful ladies who blessed my heart so much, and the study itself has been exactly what I needed right now.

I plan to share my notes each week after the study. I hope they'll be helpful for those who were there, for those who missed, and maybe for others as well. Warning--they'll be in rough note form. :) But hopefully they'll make sense!

Would love to hear from you in the comments or on FB/IG--what are you studying right now? What is God teaching you through it?