| Dear Webmaster220 Bible Study Blog, Recently, my (very private, introverted) husband surprised me by saying, "I'd like to schedule a weekly dinner with friends in our home!" Delighted, I agreed, but I was still curious. "What's prompting this?" I asked. He told me that he's craving connection and conversation. Though he usually chooses solitude over social time, he knows the importance of having people in his life and feels ready to seek it out.
I recently finished reading a memoir and the author tells of how lost his wife of thirty-eight years to cancer. He said the thing he missed the most was having a conversation partner. He knew it was going to be important to keep the conversations going in different ways moving forward. I thought that was profound. I've had seasons where conversations and time with others were robust and lively and life-giving natural outcomes of my daily life. I'm currently in a season where those conversations and relationships need to be more actively sought. Where do you find yourself today? Are you, like many of us, longing for a sense of belonging and connection?
I love how books can bring people together for robust conversation! Book clubs and Bible studies can be rich places for connection with other people. Books can also help equip us to become more connected to God, ourselves and others. This month, we're highlighting The Way of Belonging by Sarah Westfall. This beautiful book shows us that the welcome of God changes everything. | |
Lori Neff
Associate Director of Marketing | | | Reimagining How We Relate | | |  For as long as I can remember, belonging is a desire I have carried. Some people are born with birthmarks or unusually loud laughs, but I was born with a want for connection wedged into the deepest parts of my body. As a child, I pursued connection with curiosity and nothing less. Unhindered by expectations, the yearning flowed freely as I ran across the backyard, over the short fence, to ask whether my friend Emily could come out to play. I did not wonder whether Emily wanted to come over, what we would talk about, or how my disheveled hair cascaded wildly down my back. I had not yet learned how fragile relationships could be or the ways we tend to lose ourselves trying to fit in. I had not yet felt the sting of being on the outside. All I had was unfettered joy as I ran barefoot across the grass.
I often wonder if that's what Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden. Prior to experiencing the pain of separation, was belonging simply part of their daily existence, as natural as the air that moved in and out of their newly formed lungs? Without shame in nearness or nakedness, did they run through the grass with arms extended toward God and each other? At night, as wind whistled through the trees and the rivers sang their lullabies, did man and woman close their eyes without fear or hesitation, knowing they were already home?
| | Taken from The Way of Belonging by Sarah E. Westfall Copyright © 2024 by Sarah E. Westfall Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. | | | The Welcome of God Changes Everything
Despite how social we are via text, chat, and notifications, we are far from being truly connected. But what if finding the right people or the right place is not the answer? Through narrative, research, Scripture, and spiritual practice, Sarah E. Westfall teaches how belonging is a way of being–a posture of welcome in the spirit of the Father.
Read a devotion from Sarah on this topic from Proverbs 31 Ministries. | | | Going Deeper
In Faith Like a Child, Lacy Finn Borgo offers many helpful practices for creatively and gently engaging with God. This week, take some slow and quiet minutes to engage with this simple practice:
Look through old pictures and find one or two of yourself when you were a young child. Begin by asking the Spirit to bring back to your mind experiences of goodness, beauty, truth, wonder, mystery, awe, nature, woven threads of meaning, tears, and unity. Spend some time remembering one of your earliest encounters with God. As an adult, check your memory against 1 Corinthians 13, which sketches the character of God.
—Adapted from Faith Like a Child by Lacy Finn Borgo | | | The Transformative Journey of Motherhood | | | By Kathy Tuan-MacLean and Tara Edelschick | | | We always wanted to be mothers, yet neither of us was sure it would ever happen. For Kathy, it was because she was the "unmarriageable" daughter. For Tara, it was because her first baby was stillborn. So when God gave us children, we were delighted and grateful. As women with doctorates in human development, we thought we were going to be great mothers, mothers who didn't exhibit the sin patterns of our mothers and grandmothers, mothers who didn't yell or criticize or worry, mothers who would write the book on how to be great moms.
And then . . .
Motherhood hit.
If you saw us in our worst moments, you would agree that we are not the women to write about how to be great moms. Motherhood has been one of the most challenging experiences we've faced. Kathy calls the fourteen years of parenting three young children her "dark night of the soul." Tara's children say she has "dictator syndrome," often when she is struggling to believe that God is trustworthy to care for her children. Motherhood has stripped us bare, exposing our deepest fears and failures. Yet God has also used motherhood to transform our lives. In the midst of all of motherhood's highs and lows, Jesus invited us on a journey of spiritual transformation, deeper and deeper into his transforming love. | | Taken from Moms at the Well by Kathy Tuan-MacLean and Tara Edelschick. Copyright © 2024 by Kathy Tuan-MacLean and Tara Edelschick. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. | | | A Bible Study Experience for the Real Struggles of Moms
Moms long to connect with God in the midst of all their busy moments, but it can be a challenge. This seven-week Bible study from Tara Edelschick and Kathy Tuan-MacLean offers a modern-day "well" for mothers—a gathering place to encourage one another, take an honest look at the challenges we face as moms, and experience the God who invites us into a process of spiritual transformation. | | | | Get a sneak peek at the video teachings for each week: | |  | | Moms at the Well: Meeting God Through the Mothers of Scripture—A 7-Week Bible Study Experience | | Finding Ourselves in the Church Calendar | | | In this season of Ordinary Time, we offer this collect from Prayers for the Pilgrimage by W. David O. Taylor: | | For Faith
O Lord, you who are faithful and true, help me, I pray, to trust you with all my heart and not to lean on my own understanding, and where my faith is faint or faulty, help me to believe, dear Lord, so that I may find all my deepest desires satisfied in you alone. I pray this in the name of the One who is trustworthy in all that he promises and faithful in all that he does. Amen. | | | | The Connected Life
By Todd W. Hall We live in an increasingly isolated and lonely world. How do we find genuine relational connection? According to psychologist Todd Hall, real human growth doesn't come through head knowledge alone but through relational knowledge and strong attachment bonds. This accessible introduction invites us into lasting relationships—with God and others—that lead to authentic transformation. | | | True Companions
By Kelly Flanagan How do we cultivate the life-long relationships we are longing for, whether within marriage or friendship? Psychologist Kelly Flanagan shows how each of us can enjoy the deeply satisfying, transformational love of companionship. With self-knowledge and an understanding of our own loneliness and emotional defenses leading the way, we can make the choice to love more vulnerably. You can also use the five-session study guide. | | | No Longer Strangers
By Gregory Coles Belonging has never come easy to Gregory Coles. But the way Jesus tells it, if we give up on belonging in order to follow him, we'll find ourselves belonging anyway. We might not belong the way other people do, with normal homes and normal families and normal ways of fitting in. But we'll belong in a way that's a hundred times better. We'll be fully in place because we know we are out of place. | | | "Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone." —Dietrich Bonhoeffer | | | | |
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