Love . Love . Love

This is how God showed his love among us: 

He sent his one and only Son into the world 

that we might live through him.

 1 John 4:9

If you'd ask people to offer a definition of love, you'd get as many different answers as the number of people you asked.  Most would connect love with a feeling or a commitment one makes to another person.  Any definition of love that does not emanate from the person of God is not a real, lasting love. God IS love (1 John 4:8).  Without the presence of His love, there would be no love among us at all. Man has distorted all that is good about love, and those of us who know God grieve over the deception about love in our culture today.  I believe that's why it's so important to gain an accurate perception of what true love-- God's love for us and the believer's love for others--really is. We have to read the whole counsel of God's Word to glimpse His enormous love for His own.  Even taking snippets from scripture gives us an incomplete picture of His love.  I would challenge each of you to find a reading plan that works for you and commit to reading the Bible through this year.  It will be one of the most meaningful and most productive uses of your time!

For my SNSS design projects this week, I decided to focus on God's love and how that love is to be reflected by His children.  I also wanted to have some fun with the digital stamps offered at Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps.  I wanted to remind you of how versatile digital stamps can be when doing Bible journaling.  So I have a few different pages to show you today.

One of the best features of a digital stamp is its versatility.  You can easily resize, rotate and flip a digital image.  For Bible journaling this is invaluable.  Had I needed to, I could have flipped the puppy image here to have it facing inward on the opposite page in my Bible.  And I can always insure that digital images will fit my margin perfectly because they are so easy to resize.

It's sobering to consider the command Jesus gives us that we are to love one another as He loved us.  His love is incomprehensibly big!  My husband and I often laugh about our dog's love, how she loves so unconditionally, so completely and how she never tires of welcoming us when we come home, even if we are only gone for 15 minutes!  People know so much about us by the way we love others. When we see others through the eyes of God, we too can love without reservation.

For my puppy love page, I simply printed the digital stamp image, laid the paper behind my Bible page and traced it in pencil first, then outlined it and colored in with Copic markers.  I could have printed it, colored it, cut it out and affixed it to the margin as well.  I also did my hand-lettering in pencil first, then wrote over it with marker, and erased the pencil afterwards. 

I fell in love with this little birdie the minute I saw him.  One of my favorite verses of Scripture comes from 1 John 4:19, "We love because He first loved us." Without God's love in our hearts it's impossible to love others in the purest sense.  We are only capable of that kind of love it we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us.

I also printed out this digi stamp and traced it onto the margin in my Bible.  I sponged the hearts using a heart stencil, and did hand lettering (still practicing...ugh...that's the hardest part of journaling for me).  The leaves are from Words of Life: Collection 2 (stamped on) and everything in the margin is colored with Copic markers. The LOVE comes from the clear stamp set, Give Praise.

For my final December entry, I used the digital stamp, Cocoa Sends Love, and here, I reversed the image and traced.  I used PrismaColor pencil for color and sponged the clouds with ink/stencil.  The hearts are stamped (How Tweet, SNSS).

Really, isn't little Cocoa one of the sweetest images ever?  I hope you'll try out some of the digital stamps at Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps because they are so perfect for Bible journaling.  Rebecca Rios has created several for that specific purpose and I'll be showcasing one of those in January, but you can check those out HERE.

Here are the digital stamps used for today's projects, but if you go to the SNSS digital page with all the digi Valentine's sets, you will definitely drool...and probably start filling your cart!! May I add here too, that another helpful feature of digital images is their affordable price.  They are very inexpensive!