Breathe In. Breathe Out. This Is What It Feels Like to Be Alive.

I remember sitting at my school-issued desk with a coffee cup in my hands. Breathe in. Breathe out.

I closed my eyes, trying to get out of my swirl of thoughts and root myself in the present moment. My senses became an anchoring point.

I noticed the smooth curve of my mug between my hands, the way the handle perfectly fit my laced fingers. My thumb rubbed over the decorative lines engraved on its surface. My coffee was fresh, and I could feel the pottery absorbing its heat, could feel my fingers warming against the day's chill.

Breathe in. Breathe out. This is what it feels like to be alive.

I noticed the firm pressure from the wooden chair on which I sat, the firm pressure of the thinly carpeted floor under my feet. As gravity pulled me down, they held me up.

Breathe in. Breathe out. There is goodness here in this moment. This is what it feels like to be alive.

At the time, I was surviving and then recovering from my first brush with depression's terrors. Some days in that season, my mind could barely disengage from the constant onslaught of negative thoughts. My pain echoed in my head—insistent and devious. At other points, I was too numb to feel or to think. It was as if I floated through motions, disembodied, a shell of my former self.

It was within this context that I learned the value of basic grounding exercises, which narrowed my attention to the very basic, tangible elements of my existence. When my mind was in chaos, it narrowed my focus, getting me out of my head for a moment, calming my thoughts through focusing on the concrete. When my mind was numb and I couldn't "feel" emotionally, it focused my attention on what I could feel through my bodily senses, reorienting me and reminding me that I was, in fact, still alive.

In this current season of my life, I engage in this practice for typically less desperate reasons, but I still find it to be helpful. When I'm overwhelmed my things I cannot control, I go out to the garden, and focus on the sensation of the soil crumbling between my fingers. When I feel too much, I take the kids for a walk, noticing the way it feels to move my legs, the way my feet hit the pavement.

Does this fix my problems? No. But it gives me a little oasis moment in the midst of the chaos or challenge of life. It slows down my mind and my heartbeat enough to truly notice the life I am living. I am reminded of goodness and of simple joy. I am anchored in the reality that God is present with me, that I breathe the air He's given me. In the quiet moment of noticing more—and less—I can often give thanks or find words to pray, perhaps in ways I wouldn't have before. As I close my eyes and breathe—or perhaps really open them for the first time—I can see, and even if for a moment, that is enough.

Breathe in. Breathe out. There is goodness here. God is here. This is what it is to be alive.

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This post originally appeared in my Every Day Grace newsletter. If you’d like to receive reflections like this in your inbox, along with a related formation exercise, join me by signing up here.

Best Resources for Bible Study

When people find out I’ve been to seminary, I get one of three reactions. Some people assume that a seminary degree means I suddenly have all of the answers about the Bible and faith. As much as this sentiment may flatter my pride, it is far from the truth. This is not true of me and, I would argue, is not true of even the best of biblical scholars.

Others shrug their shoulders at this information, as if asking “so what?” They are skeptical of scholarship and question what a seminary education could offer that they can’t find in their own Bible reading. They doubt that understanding more about the culture or language that gave birth to the Bible—and to our Savior—could offer any further insight into what the Bible teaches us.

I find both of these reactions to be problematic, but we can save that discussion for another time. To be brief, as we think about studying theology or the Bible, we must chart a way between these two extremes. We must learn to read and study for ourselves—prayerfully, thoughtfully, and habitually reading the whole of the Bible, not merely listening to whomever we have deemed our approved expert. You do not need to go to seminary to learn to study the Bible well for yourself. But, as we are always reading the Bible in translation and across cultures, we benefit from additional resources that help us understand things like word plays we may miss, cultural asides and assumptions that would have been understood by the Bible’s first readers (or, rather, hearers), or people and places foreign to us.

This is why I appreciate the third reaction I receive. These people don’t assume I have all the answers, but they do assume I may have something to bring to the table here and there based on my additional study. They know their own life experience and personal study are important as they seek to understand and apply God’s Word—but they are open to additional insight that may add to, clarify, or enhance it.

As is the case with most training and schooling, I left seminary not with all the answers but equipped with better resources to know where to look for answers. Today I want to share with you some of my favorite resources and tools for studying the Bible. They will help us walk in this balance between learning from the Bible itself—and receiving help from those who have been doing it much longer and more in-depth than we have. I personally find them to be well-grounded and balanced when it comes to most theological issues, and I believe them to be fairly accessible and helpful regardless of your level of biblical and theological study.

Pen & Paper

I start here because I can’t imagine doing any sort of study without pen and paper by my side. Write down your questions, the things that stand out to you, the connections you find between different passages. Keep track of the ways you sense God speaking to you in the Scriptures or of what you’ve learned new. In the moment, it’ll be a helpful way to keep track of your thoughts, and in the future it will offer a reminder of the things you once knew but forgot and of how God has been at work in your study of His Word.

Study Bible

A good study Bible is a great foundation for Bible study. It should provide basic information on each book of the Bible (historical context, major themes, an outline, etc.) as well as footnotes throughout with tidbits about translation, culture, related passages, and more. I would recommend choosing a study Bible that is compiled by a panel of scholars and pastors, not one by merely one person.

Another helpful feature of a study Bible (though some standard Bibles also have this) is a cross reference list. You’ll see this running in parallel as you read the Bible. It’s usually a smaller-text column with Bible references. (The cross reference list in my study Bible is placed in the crease of the center binding of each page.) This list is an excellent way to find other passages of the Bible that relate to the one you’re studying. Seeing how the Bible refers to itself and is in conversation with itself will give you a fuller understanding as you study.

Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary

This hefty book contains maps, color photos, and vivid descriptions of people, places, and cultural practices during biblical times. A Bible dictionary is an important basic tool for personal study, and there are other Bible dictionaries available that you may want to explore. (I know buying this one new may be a little investment.) But I have the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary for my own study, and I’ve found it to be a wonderful resource.

Hard Sayings of the Bible

Have you ever read a passage in the Bible that leaves you scratching your head? The logic turns you around, perhaps? Or you hear differing interpretations and don’t know what to think? Or perhaps it’s a hard-to-grasp passage about God’s wrath or justice or knowledge? Hard Sayings of the Bible is a great resource to turn to. The authors offer thoughtful yet easy to read explanations for these “hard sayings,” putting them into biblical, historical, and pastoral context. This is one I come back to again and again when I hit challenging passages.

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth will help you pay attention to biblical genres. How do we read, study, and interpret historical books as opposed to poetic ones? What should we be aware of when we read epistles, like Paul’s letters in the New Testament? Are the Gospels biographies in the sense we read now? The authors walk through each literary genre in the Bible and give specific examples of how paying attention to genre should guide our interpretation of biblical texts. And they do it in a way that’s easy to understand, even if you don’t consider yourself to be a scholar of literature or of the Bible.

A follow-up book, How to Read the Bible Book by Book, continues this approach, but through brief entries for each book of the Bible, which include some simple guidelines and suggestions for how to read, study, and interpret it well.

CASKET EMPTY Timeline and Study Guide

The CASKET EMPTY resources will help you put each biblical book in the context of the whole story of the Bible. Not sure how the prophets compare to stories about Abraham? Not sure how the New Testament letters fit into a historic timeline? How do the various parts of the Bible fit together? CASKET EMPTY answers these questions and more with its colorful and beautifully designed timelines for the Old and New Testaments and the accompanying study guides. This resource adds the depth of biblical context to your study by keeping you grounded within the grand story of the Bible.

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These are some of my top-shelf resources for Bible study. Do you have any you would add to the list?

Praying Lament Psalms (and How to Write Your Own)

You’re sitting at Bible study. It’s time for prayer. The middle-aged woman beside you has been wrongfully let go from her job. She is the main source of income for the family and cares for her mother, who suffers from dementia. Her resume lends her few job prospects, and she doesn’t know how she’ll make ends meet. She was a hard worker and was pushed to the side—legally but wrongfully—in favor of a younger employee. She starts to pray: “Lord, they are so evil and think they can get away with this. Break their arms and chase them down until they are destroyed.”

You can hear the shuffling in the room. Someone delicately clears her throat. You shift uncomfortably in your seat and squint your eyes open to see if she’ll continue.

Does this woman have an anger problem? Does the Bible study group need to do a lesson on forgiveness or on joy in suffering?

Or has she been reading the Psalms?

Prayer For Pain: Rage Belongs Before God

At some point, many of us developed a “prayer voice.” In my experience this wasn’t the result of explicit instruction—though perhaps it was for you. I can remember times my pen would pause as I wrote in my prayer journal. My mind was blazing with what I felt. The words were there, banging against the door, waiting for the flow of ink to let them onto the page. But a sense of decorum made me reword my prayer into something more “proper.”

We feel we need to clean up our language and tidy our emotions. We stifle our grief, our rage, our questions to present composed prayers, polite prayers, dignified prayers. We do it in the name of respect, as if we will offend God’s sensibilities, as if He has not heard our thoughts already. We do it in the name of submission, as if our spirits will calm if we simply do not acknowledge the way our bruised and bloodied hearts wrestle for faith.

Where, then, are we to work through our outrage? Where do we take our smothering sorrow? Who will hear our doubts when we don’t know how to believe? What do we do with raw, open-wounded pain? If we cannot take these emotions, these moments to the God we call Father, where else will we go?

Thankfully, the Psalms give us permission to bring our fiercest, untamed thoughts and emotions to God. They teach us, as Miroslav Volf says, that our rage belongs before Him. They also offer us a model for how to do this.

Psalms of Lament: Patterns for Prayer

Psalms of Lament are the most common type of psalm in the Bible. (Just a side note: Rarely hearing these read in corporate worship is a part of our implicit “instruction” about how and what we pray.) Some of these lament psalms are shocking, particularly if you reword them into modern language.

The psalmists pray in vivid terms about their anger and grief. They bring complaints to God about their situation and freely say, “God, I don’t like this. Why aren’t you doing something?”

But the lament psalms aren’t about letting emotions go wild. They are a means of bringing these wild emotions to God Himself.

When the psalmists voice their complaints, they aren’t grumbling about what God is doing “behind His back” (as if this were possible). They bring their complaints directly to Him. When they express anger, they aren’t plotting a time to break their enemies’ arms (think of the prayer above). They’re bringing these vindictive feelings to God and asking Him to intervene. When they question God’s actions and wonder if He’s abandoned them, they are still speaking to Him. The act of bringing these emotions, desires, or doubts to God is itself an act of faith.

This is where we see the true answer to the question of submission or reverence, when they stifle our prayers. Submission doesn’t come in not feeling. It comes in taking our natural feelings and reactions in faith to God. Reverence doesn’t come in treating God like an old Victorian aunt. It comes in recognizing Him as the source of justice, healing, and comfort. Submission and reverence come as we take our broken reality and place it with limping, dependent faith at God’s feet.

Lament Psalms follow a typical pattern that teaches us how to put this into practice:

• Protest: Tell God what is wrong.

• Petition: Tell God what you want Him to do about it.

• Praise: Expression of trust in God today, based in His character and His action in the past, even if you can’t yet see the outcome.

(For some examples, take a look at Psalm 6, 10, 13, 17, 22, 25, 30, 31, 69, 73, 86, 88, 102.)

Lament psalms teach us to bring our raw emotion and desires to God—with no filter or polishing—and how to release those emotions and desires to His care. Even before our situation has resolved, we can find comfort. We come needy and desperate, and we sit expectantly with the solid truth of who He is.

The Practice of Lament: How to Write Your Own Lament Psalm

Using the pattern of the lament psalms and the freedom they offer in prayer, we can incorporate lament into our own spiritual disciplines practice. I have found this to be formative and a source of great comfort in painful seasons of life. It has provided me with words when I feel so overwhelmed that I don’t know what to pray.

You can incorporate the lament psalms in several ways. You can choose a lament psalm from the Bible and simply read it in prayer to the Lord. The book of Psalms is a prayer book, so we should feel free to use it in this way.

You could then take a lament psalm and reword it based on your current circumstances. Perhaps the “enemies” you’re crying out to God about aren’t human beings but are cancer or depression. Adapt the psalmist’s words to reflect your situation.

You could also write a lament psalm completely on your own. You don’t need to be a poet to do this. It’s for your own benefit. Simply follow the pattern. In your own words, tell God what is wrong. Then, in your own words, tell Him what you’d like Him to do about it. Then offer an expression of trust or a reminder of who He is. I have found it to be helpful to think of a character attribute of God or an example of how He has acted in the past, either in your own life or in the Bible, that applies to the situation.

For the woman in the prayer group above, a prayer of lament may read like this:

God, I don’t know what to do.
In spite of my hard work and diligence, I’ve been treated unjustly.
It’s not fair. Why did you let this happen?
I don’t know how I will make ends meet.
The rent check is due, and so is Mom’s medical bill. But there’s no money.
I don’t see any way out of this. It feels like my prayers are bouncing against a wall.

God, do something about this.
Bring me justice and punish the people who’ve done this to line their pockets with more money.
God, do something about this.
Provide for my family and be our helper.
Hear my prayers and make a way that I can’t yet see.

I will praise you, God, because you are a God of justice and you see right and wrong.
God, I won’t forget how you provided when my husband died.
I won’t forget how you gave me this job when I was unemployed.
I praise you because you are a Provider and a Helper and you see us.

The Fruit of Lament

We are formed as we pray using the Bible’s pattern of lament. We find a God who meets us in the lowest places. We enter into the sacred place where our emotions, pain, and circumstances collide with the character of God.

Sometimes we see answers to the prayers we’ve prayed. We see provision or healing or justice.

But often the “answers” we receive are surprising. They come to prayers we didn’t know to pray. Our lament bears fruit, and we see the change within our own hearts. As we bring our pain to God, we are slowly transformed.

We are reminded of His faithfulness, and we learn trust. We are reminded of His justice, and we release our desires for revenge. We are reminded of His grace towards us, and we learn to forgive. We are met with His comfort, and we learn a new shape of joy.

We find Him. Not in fancy words or composed phrases, but in the humble, simple faith of a child. And in His presence, our lament slowly becomes a place of hope.

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Have you incorporated lament into your own spiritual life? How have you found it to be helpful or meaningful? I’d love to hear about it.