His Kingdom Come Book Club ~ The Creative Call

We are hosting our first book club in the His Kingdom Come community. Beginning tomorrow we will read The Creative Call by Janice Elsheimer. We will read a chapter a week and share our thoughts and art for each chapter in a special book club group on the HKC website. If you are not already a member of HKC it is free to join the community and the book club.

In conjunction with the book club one of our members, Narda Poe, has created a coloring book of the Bible verses used at the beginning of each chapter.

The book comes in the form of a  downloadable PDF which means you can choose the type of paper you would like to print it on. It's available to purchase in the HKC shop for just $9.00. Color with crayons, colored pencils or even watercolor paints! It's well worth buying even if you're not doing the book club. And it's not too late to join the book club. 

A quote from the introduction:

"Our gifts are not from God to us, but from God through us to the world..."To whom much is given, from him much will be required.' (Luke 12:48) If God has given us the gift of creativity, 'much is required' in the way of our using it to his glory.

I'm really looking forward to art journaling through this book. Join us! His-kingdom-come.com

Sanctuary

Do you ever experience times where information comes at you in multiple ways as though life were trying to give you a message? Times where it feels as though a billboard is repeatedly placed in the path of your journey at every turn? Over the many years I have been following Christ I have come to recognize these times - these billboard signs plopped down in my path - as ways God uses to try to get my attention to some message that He has deemed important and vital to my journey. You see, I am an independent, I-can-do-things-myself kind of a woman, and I trudge along thinking "I got this", when in reality I don't. And God must use billboards, repeatedly plopped down in my path, to get my attention so that I pay attention to what He is trying to tell me and to where He is trying to lead me. Is it any wonder that I deal with issues of burnout! Over the past few months God has been trying to get my attention.

So our Take Me Deeper theme for the month of May in the His Kingdom Come community is called Sanctuary. (This will all connect,I promise!) The content of this month's devotions are topics that have been ruminating in my heart and soul for the past few years in my journey of self-discovery and dealing with burnout. I have touched on many of these topics in my blog posts, as beginning this blog was one of the ways for me to formulate and organize my thoughts during this journey. Writing the devotions for May really helped me pull it all together in an organized manner. I tend to grasp at the many threads that float in my mind and the discipline of writing a month of themed devotions has become so beneficial for me in pulling all my loose threads together. The theme of Sanctuary is about finding the places in our lives where we experience refuge, rest and respite in God's presence and making habits of dwelling in our place of sanctuary so that we live holy and healthy lives - healthy emotionally, spiritually and physically. I have to admit, that for me, the physical part has taken longer for me to be convicted about. And in the month since I wrote those devotions I realize that I did not touch on that area much in those writings. It is in this area - physical health - that God has been placing billboards in my path. It is in my place of sanctuary and the times of dwelling in God's presence that the threads all come together.

The billboards:

• This past fall I started looking at  my personality type in relationship to the issues that are brought about by stress and crisis-like circumstances. In the Myers-Briggs personality type world how you respond to stress and crisis-like circumstances is referred to as "in the grip". Being in the grip causes you to respond in manners that are not compatible with your personality type. In other words you may respond in a manner that  doesn't feel like you are being yourself. I read a few articles that helped me see this and that gave suggestions, based  on your personality type, for getting balance back. I read that INFJ's benefit from engaging in regular exercise and that it can be effective for regulating mood, quieting the mind and calming emotions. In addition, being outside and engaging your senses are also helpful in regulating mood and calming emotions.
• About that time I also stumbled on a quote that is credited to Augustine: "Solvitur Ambuland = It is solved by walking."
• This winter I began reading "How to Beat Burnout" by Minirth & Meier. They advocate making changes in the physical areas of one's life first. "Just feeling better physically often begins to change a person's burned out emotions and gives them the strength to begin other changes - physical, emotional, and spiritual."
• Recently I picked up a book I had stopped reading, "Invitation to Solitude and Silence" by Ruth Haley Barton. She says that our "spiritual journey is taken in a physical body, and there is a very real connection between caring for our body and deepening our relationship with God." She goes on to say that, "Learning to rest into God in times of solitude begins with the body."

When I prayed about and chose my word for this year, renew, I know that one area of my life that needed to be renewed was my physical health. These different billboards are convincing me that the importance here is more than just simply losing some weight - that hasn't motivated me enough in the past. The importance is that physical health is beneficial to my emotional and spiritual health. Dealing with issues of burnout have made me look closely at the importance of my emotional health and energy. Much of what I have been reading indicates that good emotional health really benefits from good physical health. I have much to explore as I dig into Scripture and look at how God views our physical body in relationship to our spiritual life and growing in spiritual maturity. 

My first art journal page for May's theme:

I didn't post much last month, so here are my art journal pages from the last three weeks of April's theme, The Resurrection Life:

From Death to Life

Power For Living

Living Hope

We have quite a community growing at His Kingdom Come and it's great seeing how everyone expresses the devotions in so many different creative mediums. There is so much talent in this group! Check out our community at His Kingdom Come.

Thankful Thursdays

I am taking part in Thankful Thursdays -  a new meme originating from His Kingdom Come.

This week I am thankful for:

1.  Spending a long weekend in Florida with the foundation team  of  His Kingdom Come. For most of us, it was the first time we had met in person    since we began the HKC community. I cannot begin to adequately describe how well we gel together as a team. We had fun, created a lot of art, and got a lot of business done.And wait until you see the collaborative class we put together which will come out next month on the HKC site!

2.  I am so thankful that it is Spring, although it is colder this week, there are leaves appearing on trees and flowers blooming in gardens. This season of new life is my favorite time of year!

3.  I am thankful that our girls are happy in their marriages. One celebrated their third anniversary this week and the other celebrates her third anniversary in June. They married great guys that I am pleased to call sons!

4.  I am thankful that through the outreach ministry of our church that God has brought into my life a few ladies and their children who I now call family. He has blessed me with a bunch of kids who are now my God-grandchildren. My friend Shonna used one of them as a model for an adult coloring book project she is working on for HKC.

                              

5.  I am thankful for my hubby. He is so supportive and encouraging in everything I do. (This one may appear on the list every week - just sayin'!)

Join us at HKC and share what you are thankful for this week. :)

The Creative Call Art Journal Notebook

Our community at His Kingdom Come is starting a book club in a few weeks. Our first book is The Creative Call: An Artist's Response to the Way of the Spirit by Janice Elsheimer. I decided to make my own notebook after reading a tutorial by Ali Manning at Vintage Page Designs. The cover is made from a single piece of  heavy stock paper and has two signatures attached with a very simple sewing method. I made it a size where my signatures could be 8.5x11 pieces of paper folded in half. I covered the front and back with a variety of pages I had painted on the Gelli Plate and added some deli paper accents. I even make the plant sprig stamp from a foam sheet! I needed a fun project to rejuvenate my creativity and energy and this did the trick!

I used a thinner paper for my pages then I normally use and it puckered on the flip-side when I adhered the accents. So on the next one I'll use watercolor paper. I'm ready to fill the pages with quotes and art! The book club begins in May and anyone can join us. Head over to the His Kingdom Come website and check us out!

We are ending a nice weekend visiting my family in Michigan for my niece's baby shower. We are all housed at my sister's (Bliss Cottage) and it has been a beautiful Spring weekend at the lake. I especially love the lake early in the morning when it is calm and reflecting the world around it.

I hope you all have a good week. It's a busy one around here. We are hosting a conference this week at my church/job and then I head down to Florida for a long weekend where the HKC foundation team is getting together for a retreat. Enjoy your week!

Resurrection Sunday

"Christ died for our sins

according to the Scriptures,

he was buried,

he was raised on the third day

according to the Scriptures."

1 Corinthians 15:3-4

He is risen indeed!