Gratitude Day 30: I'm grateful for Scriptures: My letters from Home.
The first time that I remember hearing the scriptures referred to as letters from home was about 25 or 30 years ago, maybe even longer. I was fairly newly married, a young mother, living in the eastern US, far from my parents and other family members. I had come to the Stake Center to attend the General Relief Society Broadcast. I was among friends, but still far from home. I don't remember exactly who the speaker was, but someone referred to the scriptures as "letters from home, from our Heavenly Father". It was a comforting analogy for me at the time as I eagerly awaited and enjoyed the letters that I received from my earthly parents and other family members.
I love reading from the scriptures, and try to make the time to do so daily. I'm not perfect in this regard, but when I do read daily, I enjoy it. I find I deal better with the challenges of daily life, and I believe that I am a happier person overall. Right now as a family we're reading one chapter every night from the New Testament, and I've just recently started reading The Book of Mormon again on my own. I also wanted to share a fun idea that I found just today: A 25 Day Scripture Countdown to Christmas Chain posted by Kendra at The Things I Love. She shares a lot of fun ideas for counting down the 25 days of December to Christmas Day.
Back at the end of August, my ward Relief Society gave us a 12 week challenge to encourage us to draw closer to our Savior, Jesus Christ. We have each been given a notebook with a picture of the Savior attached to the front, and a list of 12 scriptures. The idea is to concentrate on one scripture each week, reading and pondering the scripture of the week every day as part of our personal scripture study, then sometime during the week taking time to write our thoughts and feelings about the scripture in the notebook. In December we will gather together and share some of our thoughts on these scriptures and on our Savior.
No, I haven't read every single day for the past 12 weeks, but I have come close. I have written some of my thoughts about every single scripture reference in my notebook, and also here on this blog. Most weeks I posted my thoughts several days into the next week, but the posts were scheduled for the Sunday after that particular week's reading, so if you happen to be a regular follower of this blog, you may have missed them. So here's a list of the scriptures I've studied for the past 12 weeks, linked to the posts where I've shared my thoughts.
And there you have it. Wishing you many wonderful days of reading your "letters from home."
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