Week 9: 700 Verses to Go

Day 61          Verses Memorized:  179          Working on:  John 5: 1-15

The John Squad
(Please click here to chart your own progress!)

My Progress:

I am definitely finished with Chapter 4, even though I still seem to mess something up each time I say it.  But there are 54 verses in this chapter, so I figure it'll never be perfect just due to human error.  At any rate, I have moved on to Chapter 5.  Since my husband contracted Lyme Disease this week, he was on his back feeling like he'd been hit by a Mack truck.  So he was unable to keep up with the memorizing.  Therefore, the video for this chapter is just me (with Kevin in the background telling me when I'm messing up).  Ha!

Some Thoughts:

I am definitely starting to slowly gain more and more understanding of Jesus' heart as I meditate on His words.  His patience, His love, His concern for us, His willingness to meet us where we are, His mercy.  These are all words that I've "thrown around" in the past but I am now realizing the depth of their meaning. 

He just always took the time for everybody.  We read about the crowds that followed Him and how many people were constantly surrounding Him.  But yet, I never get the feeling that He was in a rush, or stressed out to get to His next speaking engagement.  He was just with the people.  He spent quality time with them and cared deeply for them. 

I wonder how the royal official felt when Jesus told him to go.  He had to make a decision about his faith and choose whether or not to take Jesus at His word.  That must have been a long walk back before the servants met him with the news!

Additional Thoughts:

My 8 month old baby just began crawling around and putting every nook and cranny off the floor into his mouth.  So today I pulled out a piece of paper and saw the words "six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing."  I immediately recognized it as John Chapter 2!  He had eaten one of my photocopied Bible pages that I carry around with me!  Because it's been in and out of my pocket so many times, it was already nice and soft, so I'm sure it digested easily.  I was extremely aggravated that now I had to re-photocopy that page and break it in again!  That feeling was quickly replaced with guilt that I was more concerned with my memory paper than I was about my son's health!  And I just can't resist the corny joke "at least he's feasting on the word of God!"  Man does not live on bread alone, right?