What strange days these have been. My 11-year-old told me yesterday that she thought quarantine was fun. The teenagers and young adults at the end of the table groaned and rolled their eyes. It’s hit us all differently, hasn’t it? I think children and puppies are mostly happy to have their people around to play so much more.

The rest of us? This is hard.

It has been the lentiest of Lents. A truly hard season in life we nearly everyone is overwhelmed by the burdens weighing us down, the crosses the He’s asked us to carry.  You may have even looked heavenward and all you feel is… abandoned. 

At Take Up and Read, we’ve had to adjust our business plans in light of corona quarantine as well. We’ve always resolutely focused our ministry on our studies. We work hard to produce and publish beautiful books for you, and we mostly resist the urge to sell anything else (because it takes precious energy from the books). You might imagine that we spent considerable time wondering what God’s plan for us is when we learned that for the foreseeable future Amazon is not printing our books. It’s diverting all its paper focus to toilet paper and medical supplies. And it’s focusing delivery on essentials. Amazon doesn’t consider Bible study essential. So, Amazon is not much concerned with our ministry’s effort to support you to study of the word of the Lord right now.

But we think that now more than ever we need to be reminded of his consolations.

I’m a paper book person through and through, so I’ve long resisted ebooks. I mean, how do you journal in an ebook?

We’re about to find out.

We have set aside the new book we’d planned for this spring. It’s a book that is just perfect for the beginning of a new season. It shouts glad optimism and the hope of a fresh start. Let’s do that one together when this is all over.

For now, let’s turn to the book we introduced when we began this ministry, Consider the Lilies.

Nearly three years ago, I gathered some women whom I knew understood what it was to suffer. I had in my heart the idea for a study that would speak to the suffering heart. In my mind, there was one person for whom I wanted to gather all the words I could offer for a time of tribulation. I held him in my thoughts and prayers as we wrote and edited a book of consolation. Consider the Lilies is that gift of the heart.

(As it turns out, that person who first inspired this book is on absolute lockdown in Brooklyn as I write. He tells me that his experience with sorrow and loneliness has prepared him for just these moments in life. It’s a miracle to me how God provides before we even know what we need.)

With this study, we will dig deep into the study of God’s words of consolation. Where is He when it hurts? 

Consider the Lilies is full of the consolations of the Holy Spirit. Here, you will find a guidebook to what God is saying, how He is encouraging you to lament, to pour out your grief and your fears and your anger. This journal acknowledges that in this broken, fallen world we do suffer.

In it, you find the words you need to console a friend, to empathize with the people around you who are suffering. I promise you, they are suffering. You are daily surrounded by people who bow low under the weight of grief, often without any outward sign of dismay. This study makes you a better friend to the woman next to you (even if you are speaking across six feet distance), to the growing child who aches, to the spouse who despairs. And it buries words into your heart so that they are there, waiting, when the rain begins to fall. Because it will fall.

This study will be for all of us. We’re all in it together. 

And we’re really, really glad you’re here.

Before we begin together, we will share with you some tips for journaling directly in your Bible. If you just can’t bring yourself to put pen to those pages, we’re offering you a gift of all the journaling pages (and only the journaling pages) so that you can print only those and read the rest of the book on your laptop or your desktop or your phone or your Kindle.

Hint: if you are using your journals in a group (hello, Zoom, what a friend you are to us right now), you’ll find that the conversation starters here every day also work well in a group setting. Find a girlfriend or two and share. We've also prepared a special FREE guide for groups, complete with conversation starters for every week and recipes to make things more fun. Click here to get yours right now.

The print book is still exclusively at Amazon.com and it will ship when life returns to its previous state of being. Given that uncertainty, maybe you will want to join me in reading the digital version because that’s what God has provided just now?

The gorgeous digital version is only $10 and it will help keep this very small business afloat during a time when no print books can be published or shipped.

Click here to purchase the PDF version of Consider the Lilies.

• With it, you will get a separate free download of journaling pages to print at home.

• You’ll also receive detailed instructions for uploading the PDF to your Kindle or to the Kindle app on your phone.

• You can also find beautiful, printable, free art to go with the study here.

• And you can find free printable scripture study cards here.

Children and puppies aside, these are difficult days. We long for community; we ache for sacraments. We are uncertain about all things economic and we are worried about our health and the health of the people we love. It’s a lot.

Honestly, I can think of no better study for a time such as this one. Please join us. We’ll begin the study together on April 20.