As 2020 is still unfolding, I’m trying something new for my devotional time in the morning. For most of 2019 I used Oswald Chambers’ ‘My Utmost For His Highest’ and Tim Keller’s daily devotional on the Psalms.

This year, as part of my goal to engage scripture more consistently, I’m taking a stab at scripture journaling – simply recording thoughts while reading and pondering scripture. I’m clearly not alone in this notion, as there’s a pretty wide selection of “Journaling Bibles” that one can purchase. But in the limited research I conducted, none of them appeared to have all that much space for notes. Besides, I have a variety of perfectly useful Bibles already.

So I’m using the fairly basic and slim Bible I have on my desk in my den/office. For a journal, I’m using an A5 (roughly 5.25×8.5) sized “bullet journal” I picked up a couple of years ago. I’d decided, after messing with it, that I wanted something smaller and more portable for an actual bullet journal, and went with an A6 (roughly 4.25×6) size for that purpose. (I may post more in the future about the basic, non-artsy approach to bullet journaling I’ve adopted).

But the A5 size turns out to be great for scripture journaling. It’s a standard dot grid, hard cover bullet journal that lies flat for writing, especially after a proper break-in. (See bullet journal creator Ryder Carroll’s quick video on breaking in a new journal). The A5 journals can easily be had for $5-$8 on Amazon.

I’m starting with Romans. My approach is to take a relatively small section of scripture each day. I don’t have a schedule of readings, or a target date to get through a certain book of the Bible. I’m just taking it one day at a time.

We’ll see if I can stay consistent with it, but so far I’m enjoying it. My handwriting is pretty hideous, but this exercise is really meant for my own growth, so it really doesn’t matter.