Stampin' Sisters in Christ challenge 139 . . two by two

Happy Sunday stampers! It is time for another challenge from Stampin' Sisters in Christ, where all of our challenges are based on scripture. This week our sponsor is Doodle Pantry images, you can find more creations from our design team on the home page right here. We have our expanded design team now so there might be up to 12 lovely project to view and all the ladies are far more talented than I am! 


This week I am the hostess and I chose this verse from Genesis 6:20 "Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive." The challenge this week is to use an animal or bird or living creature in your creation somewhere. And I apologize, I put Exodus in my devotional, I don't know why. Here are the thoughts that prompted that verse selection: 

About six weeks ago I found a toy ark for the new nursery we’re setting up at church; the room for babies up to age two. The ark includes Mr. and Mrs. Noah and several pairs of animals. We all know the story of course, two of every kind of animal went onto the ark to escape the flood. And that’s sort of what we come to expect from life, isn’t it—to be in a pair, a couple, a twosome?

I haven’t volunteered in a nursery for years because although I love the babies and it is a joy to hold them, I have a private struggle with sadness when there.  A lot of the other volunteers are young mothers who are in the room with their own baby. Their husbands come to the door to pick them up and they leave, together. This is a small, new church and a lot of the people are related, so cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, are all worshipping and doing life together.

As happy as I am for these families, I have painful recollections of standing on the edge of groups and couples like this in my own child-rearing years, because for much of that time I was a single mom. Week after week, year after year, the kids and I walked through church on the edges and we were alone. 

It happens a lot you know, whatever the circumstances might be; whether you’re single and never been married, divorced, widowed or separated from your family by distance or circumstances beyond your control. Whatever caused those circumstances it feels as though you’re surrounded everywhere by nothing but happy couples; everyone walking through life two by two.

Several chapters away from Genesis in the bible, the psalms appear as soothing balm to the troubled soul. In this instance, Psalm 139 came to my rescue. As intimate as a marriage relationship or the closest bond between friends or even parent and child, more intimate is the relationship between the Lord and me. 1“You have searched me and know me . . . you perceive my thoughts from afar.” 3b“You are familiar with all of my ways. 4Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.”

Who knows our inmost thoughts our deepest longings, darkest fears and cherished dreams better than the Lord, and who loves us despite and through it all?

15“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place…”

God made me. How much more intimately can someone know me than the one who created me?

16“All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

My sudden status as a single mom was no surprise to God. And He was there every step of the way. He supported me when I was down, actually provided and safeguarded my little family in ways that I can only consider miraculous. I was never really alone, I was walking in a twosome with the God of the universe who is not a remote, foreign being but one who knew me and loved me in the best way possible. And one who still loves me and is gently calling me to lay that sadness down once and for all.

I honestly wasn’t expecting a toy, plastic ark to bring to the surface so many of my old hurts and feelings from that painful time. But God knows us and He loves us and doesn’t want us to stay stuck in our past pain. One great way to solve old hurts or new is to seek out answers in the scripture.

You have to search; I don’t know which verse will strike the right chord in your heart.  But when those wounds pop open at the sight of an ark, a tree, or cloud, the sound of an old song or a distant scent that opens the floodgates of a painful memory, start searching through the scriptures to find an answer. You won’t be doing it alone, the God who made you, who loves you is walking with you. 


Thanks for looking and we hope you can play along this week.