Gratitude Documented Day 3 – Dark Days fandom journal with me

Hello, friends, and happy November! Today’s prompt from Illustrated Faith’s Gratitude Documented project is “A love that endures,” which immediately made me think of a song I love from the unofficial-official Hunger Games movie soundtrack. I’ll share my thought process and some photos of the results with you today. Enjoy!

The prompt: “A love that endures”

For each day of the month-long Gratitude Documented project, Illustrated Faith provides a prompt and a verse from Scripture to journal our gratitude. In the past, I’ve come to find that just one verse isn’t enough for me, so this year I decided to dive deep with lots of cross-references and reading into the context of each verse. Here’s today’s verse prompt:

The fandom: “Dark Days” by the Punch Brothers

When I read this prompt, a line from this song by the Punch Brothers came into my head immediately:

Sister, hide our love away/ From the evil we both know/ It can see us through these dark days though they seem to darken as we go/ Our love will see us through these dark, dark days, sister, till it lights the way back home

The Punch Brothers, “Dark Days”

I’ve already written an entire post on this song which went in a completely different direction, so I’m curious to see where today’s study will take me.

My process

I set up these fandom journal pages with some patterned paper from Michael’s, the packaging of my Gratitude Documented kit, various washi tapes, and this lovely set of faux polaroids I found on Etsy. I started by coloring the headings on each page with a Crayola Colors of the World marker and a visual foundation in the top-left and bottom-right corner of the pages. I then used all of the lovely pens and markers in my collection to letter and write out the lyrics of “Dark Days”, as well as the verses that I found.

I was looking for verses in the topics of “love, hard times, dark vs. light, endurance, trials, resistance, perseverance,” which led me first to Psalm 136:23-24:

He remembered us in our humiliation  
His faithful love endures forever.  
and rescued us from our foes.  
His faithful love endures forever. 

This psalm repeats the refrain “His faithful love endures forever” after every line, which makes it a perfect mantra for someone struggling to persevere. It’s an ideal reminder of the faithful love of the Lord, which will see us through all the dark days.

The next verse I looked at in my study today was 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. I read the passage in both NASB (a more direct translation) and the Message translation (paraphrase), and really enjoyed the poetic feel of the Message:

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. Some other verses I wrote down were Romans 12:9-10, Lamentations 3:22-23, and 1 John 4:10-12.

Takeaways

The key truth I took away from today’s study is the fact that God’s love will never leave, run out, or be held back from me. His love really will endure forever, no matter how short I’ve fallen or how dark my insides or outsides feel. Amen?

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Bible study/journaling process with me. Are you joining Gratitude Documented this year?

Happy journaling!