Deep Blue Devotion #2 - Why My Bible Looks Like a Coloring Book

Deep Blue Devotion: a series of biblically creative helps

for enhancing intimate times with the Lord and

deepening personal discipleship.

As you can tell from my blog title (Light Blue) I'm a color-attuned person. And as such I began a Bible-reading practice in college of using colored pens to underline the words of Scripture as I read. It was encouraging to me this week to meet a brother in Christ who did the exact same thing. This has inspired me to share this in this week's DBD about coloring in your Bible.

The year was 2003. The Iraq War began. Scientists mapped 99.9% of the Human Genome. And Coldplay's "Clocks" was in heavy rotation on radio stations. Half-inspired by a shiny-new package of multi-colored G2 pens, the other half from devotional helps someone gave me, I took the new Bible I bought for myself, took a spin through the Scriptures using the DJ Bible Reading Plan for the first time and employed my use of color thusly:

Crimson: Christ-centered or theologically resonant statements

Light Blue: explicit passages of promise and hope

Black: Sobering passages of judgement of justice

Green: Calls and inspirations to personal growth and spiritual formation

Blue: Wisdom or Proverbial statements

Purple: Unadulterated praise to God

That just happened to be the colors contained in that particular package (there was also a pink pen, but I gave it to my sister. Nothing personal against pink, but, yeah...). There are many other pen colors and highlighters out there, but these just seemed to be the ones that stuck with me. There are myriad passages where the colors criss-crossed because of the richness and multifaceted nature of God's Word.

And as I still use that same Bible in lesson preparation and teaching, it is helpful to my teaching and to my heart to have these color-coded reminders of the variety and beauty of God's Word to us.

You don't have to use my color assignments or systems. You may have your own or another idea of marking in such a way as to remind you of truth in the Word (if so, please send it on). But the most important thing is to be reading and interacting with the Bible. It's okay to write (or color) in your Bible.

For me it's been essential.

-jsm-