This is a little church somewhere up around 148th and Amsterdam. I guess that's technically Hamilton Heights and not Harlem proper, but it's close enough. Another interesting thing I found up in that neighborhood is this sign, just randomly posted on the side of a shop. The store was just a little bodega--not a church or anything, but its owner clearly has very strong feelings about God:
Harlem is one of the few places I know of where you can just be walking around doing your normal day-to-day business and be confronted with a sign like this. It's completely random and yet entirely at home in this part of the city, where church and God are a big part of the culture.Well, I'm going to take a cue from the sign and "surrender my life to Jesus" in a sense, and let him be my guide through the scriptures. Today I'm making a new goal to read the whole Book of Mormon again, start to finish, before the year ends. That equals exactly ten pages a day, which I think is doable. The purpose of my goal is to increase my spirituality and connection with my faith, and hopefully gain a little more understanding about my life. If anyone wants to join me in this personal challenge, I promise that you will be spiritually enriched. At any rate, I'll be posting updates on my progress on upcoming Sundays.
2 comments:
I don't know if you were going for anything in particular with that first picture, but it's got a strange awesomeness about it. Nice work.
I'm sort of curious what you hope to learn about yourself in reading a book you've read before, though. I mean not that you can't or won't, but it seems like there might be bigger personal challenges you could attempt that might do more. Or maybe not. I look forward to the updates either way. :)
Thanks, Donnie. Well, it's not so much that I want to learn about myself by reading the Book of Mormon again (maybe for the 10th or 12th time), but that I want to accomplish the following:
1. Make reading my scriptures a daily habit, because its a habit that I want to have. It will only become a habit if I do it for at least a month, and I can only do it for a month if I force myself, and I can only force myself by having a challenging goal.
2. Bring a stronger spirituality into my life by taking time to read and ponder the words of prophets, Jesus, etc. The more spirituality in my life, I think the more grounded I will be, and less likely to let everyday pettiness bring me down.
3. Discover new insights. No matter how many times you read the Bible or Book of Mormon, there will always be something new that strikes you, that you didn't see before. It might be about myself, an answer to a question, or about life in general.
Those are the main objectives... we'll see how it goes.
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