Kristin Duran - A Girls Guide to Bible Journaling: A Christian Teens Workbook for Creative Lettering and Celebrating Gods Word

To my mom. Nearly every day of my childhood, I woke up to you sitting at the kitchen table, cup of coffee in hand, reading the Bible. Its the image of you that I will carry for the rest of my life. Thank you for teaching me to be a woman who loves the Word of God.

M y junior year of college, I moved from Arizona to Texas to marry my high school sweetheart. Two weeks after I got there, we broke up. I didnt know a single person in my new city and I didnt have a car, so I stayed locked inside my empty apartment, panicking nonstop about the idea that I was totally alone. Although I had been raised in a Christian home and knew I should turn to God with my pain, I was nervous to actually pray, sure that it would bring me face-to-face with the depth of my sadness and I wouldnt be able to recover.

Yet one night as I lay in bed, I suddenly ached to read my Bible. I reached into an unpacked box in my closet and pulled it out, opening up to the beginning with no expectation of what I would find. I absent-mindedly skimmed the chapters for a few minutes until my eyes fixated on a verse in Genesis:

Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees; for she said, Have I also here seen Him who sees me?

Genesis 16:13

Immediate, heavy tears dropped onto the page. I remembered the story. A woman named Hagar was alone in the wilderness, facing tremendous rejection. God met her there and promised His provision. In response, she called Him the God-Who-Sees. And I knew in that moment that the same God who saw Hagar could see me too. He saw that I was angry. He saw that I didnt know what to do next. I reached back into the box from my closet, pulled out a pen and some green cardstock, and wrote out You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees. I taped the paper to my nightstand and fell asleep with a tinge of comfort that God was there, somehow present with me in my grief.

The next day, anxiety flooded my mind again. But instead of hiding from my emotions and going back to bed, I opened my Bible. As I read Psalm 91, I felt emergency relief and a spark of hope. I grabbed the same cardstock and pen and wrote out a new verse:

Your faithfulness will be my shield.

Psalm 91:4

This verse collided with my heart, downloading into me some sort of blueprint to fight hopelessness. If I could remember Gods faithfulnessthe way He had provided for me, loved me, and protected me in the pastI could trust Him to be faithful to me in the future. Remembering Gods faithfulness became a shield to protect me from sinking into despair.

Over the course of the next few months, my room became wallpapered in Scripture. I had cardstock verses taped all over my walls, to my mirrors, inside drawers, and above my bed. Everywhere I looked were truths about God. Every good and perfect gift is from the Father (James 1:17) went above my coffee maker, reminding me that everything good in my lifeeven small things, like a hot cup of coffeewas given to me by God, warm evidence of His love. Be clothed with compassion, kindness, humility (Colossians 3:12) was taped to my closet door, instructing me that what I wore on the inside mattered, even in the midst of depression. Because my eyes were constantly reading Scripture, I began to memorize it, and my heart became strong. Courage poured into me, building me up from the inside, teaching me about who I was because I was learning about who God was.

Five years later, I ended up marrying that same boyfriend. But as I look back on that season of my life, I get on my knees with gratitude that we went through our seemingly permanent breakup. The habit of searching the Bible, writing it out, and therefore memorizing it is a practice Ive brought into my marriage, my ministry, and now my parenting. And its changed the course of my career, too. A few years ago, I taught myself calligraphy so that I could give meaningful verses to friends and family as Christmas presents. The year that my husband and I started working in college ministry, I began selling my artwork online to help put us through ministry school. Last year, Scripture art became my full-time job. And while this art career has been a fun plot twist in my life, its absolutely nothing compared to the beauty of knowing God better, constantly pursuing Him through reading my Bible and painting His word.

My friend, I hope with all of my heart that as you read this book and learn how to Bible journal, it wont be just a fun new art form. I hope it changes your life. I hope it meets you in your own days of pain, and in your joy, and in all of your daily circumstances. I hope you see the God who sees you. Join me, and lets love His word together.

I have to admit, when I first heard about Bible journaling, I was pretty skeptical. Sure, the practice of writing and illustrating in a journaling Bible (a Bible with extra blank space included in wide margins) made for pretty pictures to look at as I scrolled through Instagram, but I felt nervous about assuming that I could draw inside the Word of God. Was it disrespectful to paint the actual Bible? Was it wrong to write paragraphs of my own thoughts next to sacred text? Although I had always underlined important passages, this was taking the interaction to a whole new level.

And also, lets be real: what if I messed up? Its one thing to smudge a painting on a piece of sketch paper that I can throw away. Its another thing to smudge a painting in the Holy Word of the Most High God, and its not like I can just rip out Psalm 23 and pretend nothing happened. But as I began to investigate this new, trendy art form, I learned something that changed it all for me: Bible journaling isnt a new art form at all. Its been around for thousands of years, and you and I have the beautiful opportunity to join its rich heritage.

Before the printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the fifteenth century, the Bible, like all books, had to be copied by hand. This was an incredibly tedious process, and it made Bibles so rare and expensive that the only people who could afford one were members of the nobility. In addition, most people were illiterate during the Middle Ages (including the nobility), and the Bible was usually written in Latin, so even those who had access to a Bible often couldnt read ita stark contrast to our ability to linger with the Bible and our journals in the morning. Illustrations therefore became a crucial element, often painted directly next to the text, serving as aids for explaining Bible stories. You can still see examples in museums of beautifully illuminated Bibles, such as the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels, their gold-leafed pages holding paintings of scenes such as the birth of Jesus and portraits of the disciples.

After the Gutenberg Press was invented, printed Bibles became more accessible and more widely translated into common languages. At this time, writing in the Bible took on a new, important role: preserving family history. Without online databases or organized government records, families used heirloom Bibles to chart meaningful information, such as birthdays, deaths, and weddings, alongside family tree information and treasured photos. These precious Bibles were passed down through the family, becoming a way for the new recipient to grab hold of the history before them, add in their own story on blank pages, and pass it on to the generation that followed.