Married to the Cloth

Thompson Chain Reference Bible has long been the Bible for in-depth study.  According to Wikipedia “  Dr. Frank Charles Thompson, in the early 1900s, but the original work was started in 1890. Thompson was born in 1858, in   Elmira ,   New York , and was ordained in 1879. His wife was Laura Boughton Thompson. He began work on the system because of his dissatisfaction with the reference Bibles that were then available to preachers: Dr. Thompson believed the Bible should be presented in a simple, but scholarly way. He saw the need for a well-organized reference Bible that would be of practical use to the layman as well as a minister. In 1890, Dr. Thompson began the work he would continue for the rest of his life. He completed the "thought suggestions" opposite the verses throughout the Bible. These are what became the "chain-links" that are the heart of the Thompson system. Dr. Thompson created these chain link topics (4,000 of them) leadership by from verse to verse...

  My friend Rhonda Stoppe once said that as the wife of a pastor who has a church in California that we were “called to California”. Still not a phrase I am completely comfortable with, but she isn’t wrong.  California has held 7 generations of my father’s family, maybe 8. My husband’s pastorate will hold its 125th anniversary which is extra amazing given how many churches were destroyed in the fire of 2018 as it swept through our town. But I still don’t consider myself to be a Californian. Seven schools by age 7 can do that to you, let alone 2 continents and 3 countries. Which brings me first to the artwork of the Bible we will look at in this post. I totally saw California Golden poppies. They are absolutely not botanically correct for a poppy. They aren’t even passable as a poppy but that is still what my heart saw. Silly girl. Being the start of the Gregorian calendar year, this is often the season of new reading plans, new resolutions and goals. This seemed like a good ti...