“If I can’t take out time to read the bible because of homework, I’ll make my homework to read the bible.” That is what I thought when I found out about the college bound book assignment. I wanted to raise my grade in English, make time to read the bible everyday, learn more about the bible, and possibly gain an opportunity to tell my friends about the bible. Little did I realize just how much work I really had in store for the next few weeks?
For a long time, I had been struggling to set aside a certain time to read the bible because almost every day I would have homework to fill that time. When I saw that the bible was an option in the project I immediately chose to do the New Testament. First off, I chose the New Testament over the Old Testament because I was extremely interested in gaining a clearer grasp of some parables and of Jesus’ life. The day it was assigned was the day I began reading; each day I read 15 chapters. I started off taking notes and really meditating on what I read. In just the first three days I had pages of notes and verses that stood out to me from that days reading. Soon though, homework piled up and my time grew short. I stopped taking as many notes and the time I spent thinking about what I read decreased significantly. I went through almost five books in the “I-have-to-hurry-and-finish-mindset.” That proved to be a bad way to go as I look back and realize how much I missed out on.
On May 16th, I wrote the layout for the storyboard. I narrowed the events down to only twenty pictures and I fully intended it to be a simple task. On Thursday, May 19th, it became brutally clear to me that I would have to put in a lot more work that I had first intended and the work needed to begin right then and there. Thursday night I stayed up until 11:30 working on the drawings and only got through four of them. When I woke up Friday morning, not only was I tired but I did not feel good. I stayed home but unfortunately I did not get much rest. From 7:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. I worked on the drawings – thankfully finishing the life of Jesus, on Saturday, I worked from 10:30 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. on the paintings, and Sunday, I worked on the pictures from 2:00 p.m. until 10:30 p.m.
I enjoyed reading the book and doing the actual project but I felt really cramped for time when it came to doing the work. When I was doing the work I did not feel like it was a burden or that I didn’t want to do it; on the contrary, I had fun doing it but the problem was that I lost track of time. I think the amount of time we received to read the book and complete the project was more than fair, but I found trouble in balancing the homework I had in other classes. The project was, at the very least, an extremely beneficial experience because I learned more than I honestly expected to.
On Sunday, May 15 I went to “Froot Loops”, which is a girl’s bible study that I have with some friends from church. Sunday night, my mom’s house got hit with some bullets – most likely the effects of a gang fight near her house. The reading I did the weekend of May 15th corresponded with the events in such an amazing way that I found myself meditating on the reading all week. In my journal I wrote: Well, Monday after school I found out that someone shot 5 bullets at my mom’s house! She wasn’t home - THANK GOD - when it happened because she works overnight and it happened about 11:30-12:00 on Sunday night. Monday after school I went out with my mom to help do her laundry and just get her out of her house and after we went to the bank there was a car accident right in front of us!! Now, I’m not the kind of person to write things off as coincidence so now I am trying to figure out what God is trying to tell me. Also this weekend I was reading through Corinthians for an assignment in English class and Sunday in Froot Loops a verse from Corinthians became our memory verse. It was 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 and it reads:"3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
The way everything fit together really helped me to re-focus my walk with Christ and I learned that daily reading of the word is so important. I realized - similar to what I did in ‘The Turn of the Screw” project - how much information I can skip over when I don’t read between the lines. This lesson rang most true when I was reading the parables. One parable in Matthew was talking about the fish and the nets and something about separating the fish. My first reaction was to keep reading but I went back and dug deeper into the verses. Matthew 13:47-50 reads: "Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away. This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Near the verse I wrote some notes: “This parable is SO amazing! Think about it… The net came down to catch the fish (the kingdom is offered to us on Earth), then God pulls the net out (our chance to accept Him has passed), the fish are separated (we are separated into Heaven or Hell.)
Another challenge I faced in this project was figuring out how I would display the New Testament. I was nervous about skipping over information because it is all important but I knew it would be impossible to cover everything. I talked with my cousin, Julia, about what I should do and she told me she would pray about it and that I should just do what I felt led to. I prayed about it as I worked, taking breaks between drawings to say a quick prayer about them, and I think God answered those prayers. As I began showing people the work I had done all weekend, I saw the response to be almost unanimous –with the exception of a few individuals who pointed out the missing information or things I skipped over. Almost everyone agreed that the pictures were great. As I look at them, I do not see greatness at all; I see simplicity. Though some of them took me a long time, I think they are childish art pieces and could use serious improvement. The one thing I will admit about them is that they are powerful. After completing the life of Jesus, I went through them and it was rather emotional for me. I am left knowing that God answered the prayers or Julia and mine own in giving the pictures an aura of passion.
The most challenging portion of the drawings for me was the life of Paul. Instead of just showing what he did, I had to take what he said and turn it into something visual. He wrote letters to people from his prison cell – giving them advise and encouragement. The easiest section was the life of Jesus because I have seen numerous movies about his life and it was easier for me to picture what occurred; the visualizations were not all left for my imagination. The only challenged I found in the life of Christ was doing a fraction of justice to the actual events that occurred. The book of Revelation was also a challenge but it was my favorite to do. It was a challenge because it has not happened yet so there is no visual for me to imagine and the way it is written is somewhat hard to understand. It is my favorite for those same reasons though, because it has not yet happened and because it is left to my imagination. I spent a long time meditating on what the future holds for the world. I even went as far as researching some of the “signs of the times” and that, alone, got me thinking. For example: Matthew 24:5 says "For many will come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and will mislead many." I learned that in the last few decades, many people have claimed to be the Messiah. Jim Jones, who led mass suicides and David Koresh, who went on trial for attempted murder and who believed he was the head of the biblical house of David, are examples of these false Christ’s. More recently I have heard about, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism who added to the bible and said it was the “completed bible” and Reverend Mooney, who claims to be sinless when Romans 3:23 says “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, along with many others. These false teachers are just a beginning to the ultimate false Christ, the antichrist.
Overall, I learned a lot in doing this project. To recap, I learned that I need to make it a habit to read between the lines, I need to read the bible daily, and pray continually about what I do. I am thankful for this project because it got me to think about the future events that will one day take place and about certain verses in the New Testament that I may never have looked at. I loved thinking about the books and trying to visualize what would be happening. Though it was a challenge, it was beneficial because I learned and gained a lot from it. My original mindset in making time to read the bible was good, but now I know that reading the bible has to be on the top of my list, even before homework. If I don’t have time, I’ll make time because life on earth is short and I want to make it beneficial while I’m here; storing up for myself treasures in Heaven rather than treasures on earth, where most and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal – Matthew 6:19-20.
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