For years I have resented Black Friday. I remember a time not too long ago in which the “thanks” was kept in “Thanksgiving.” It was a treasured time of counting your blessings and adjusting your attitude to one of gratitude.
Not too far in the recent past, however, the commercialization of the Christmas season began it’s hostile takeover of Thanksgiving with the creation of my new nemesis, Black Friday. Not content with preempting the remaining Thanksgiving weekend with a consumerism mindset, early bird specials soon followed – beginning on Thanksgiving Day itself!
In an effort to keep the “thanks” in Thanksgiving, a few years ago our family started the tradition of getting together on Black Friday for dinner with another family, combining our leftovers from the day before and enjoying a good time of family fellowship instead of shopping. The past two years, we have added games to our night of fellowship. This year, we’re planning the whole evening as an extension of Thanksgiving Day with Gratitude Game Night.
Everyone gets two slips of paper and writes one word on each slip of something for which they are thankful. For example, my daughter bought her first car this summer, so it would be entirely appropriate for her to write “car” on one. All slips are collected in a bowl. The bowl is passed around the table with players selecting one at a time. Take turns trying to get the table to guess your word without using that word, similar to CatchPhrase. Alternate version – play as family teams.
One person at a time chooses a letter of the alphabet. Using a timer, each player (or team) writes as many things for which they are thankful that begin with that letter as they can imagine. When the timer goes off, each player (or team) shares their list one item at a time. All duplicated items on everyone’s lists are marked out. The player (or team) with the most items still on their list is the winner!
Each player thinks of something for which they are thankful. On a 3×5 card, they write a definition of that thing from the general to the more specific. All cards go into a bowl, which gets sent around the table one player at a time. Each player takes one card out, reads the definition to the group and each person tries to 1) figure out what the object of thanks is, and 2) who wrote it.
How does your family keep the “thanks” in Thanksgiving? Please share your bright ideas (or links) in the comments.
Just three of the wonderful women of faith you’ll meet this summer (as portrayed by He Qi, Slavujac, & Wilhelm Wachtel).
What is the Summer Bible Study?
A weekly Bible study to help you connect with the women in the Word on a personal level – to get to know them as friends and sisters and mentors and kindred spirits. Each week is “self-contained” (or module-based), which means if you have to skip a week due to vacation, sickness or just plain life, you can pick back up with the following week without feeling behind. (Also, because it’s module-based, you can choose to have a 6-week, 8-week, or 10-week study, depending on your preference and availability, which makes it ideal for church-based Bible study.)
What can I expect?
Every participant spends one-on-one time with the “woman of the week” – getting to know her culture, her history, her life, her struggles, her reactions, her relationship with God.
The study is organized into five days per week, 2-3 questions per day –
Days 1 & 2 are foundational, as they introduce you to the woman of the week.
Days 3 & 4 are more relational, helping you make connections (and form a friendship) with the woman of the week.
Day 5 is applicational, making connections between your shared experiences and what God’s Word has to say on those specific topics.
Can I do the study by myself?
Yes! Everyone participating will do the Summer Bible Study as an individual study. The focus is connecting individually to the woman of the week. You will undoubtedly be challenged as you get to know a new woman from the Word weekly because you are connecting one-on-one with her.
Can I do the study with a group?
Yes! I actually encourage you to add a weekly group setting to the individual study. I did this informally in my home once a week with three close friends. Some may want a larger group setting (at their church, for example) and some may prefer to get together with only one friend.
I highly recommend adding the group option for two reasons:
Each participant will each connect in a different way with the women in the Word and meeting together helps to round out the personality of the woman of the week by seeing how others connected with her.
It opens doors for connecting on a deeper level with the women in your present-day life as they share their struggles, their hearts and their connections with the woman of the week.
NOTE: Because the Summer Bible Study is module-based, it is ideal for your Women’s Bible Study ministry. Once you choose the length of the study, you can handpick which women you want to cover during that time period. Please email ericka@erickaosmith.com for more information on using the FREE Summer Bible Study in your church’s women’s ministry.
How long does it last?
This is a 12-week, self-contained (or module-based) Summer Bible Study. That means if you have to miss a week (or more), you will be able to jump back into it the following week without feeling like you are behind.
What is the time commitment?
Plan to spend at least 30 minutes a day during the five-day individual study. Like most things in life, you will get more out of it if you invest more into it.
If you add the small group element, 2 hours one day a week would be ideal.
How does it work?
Beginning Monday, June 6, I will introduce a new woman of faith and provide a link to the study for her. I will introduce a new friend every Monday following June 6 with her accompanying link. The last will be introduced on Monday, August 22.
How much does it cost?
It’s free!
What if I have more questions?
Please leave your questions in the comments or email ericka@erickaosmith.com.
This FREE Summer Bible Study is about building bridges – both to the past and in the present. Construction begins June 6.
The Summer Bible Study provides a bridge for you to connect with women both from the past and in the present.
ONE-ON-ONE: Spending time together is essential in fostering friendship. Spend one-on-one time each week with a new woman from the pages of the Bible. See her faith come alive, teaching by example, as you connect with her over shared experiences. This is the backbone of the Summer Bible Study – connecting with the women in the Word. I had no idea each week how (or if!) I’d connect with the different women in the Word, but by Day 3 I felt as if I’d met a new friend. By Day 5, we were friends for life. Every. Single. Week. My faith was strengthened each week as these women spoke Truth to me, many times ministering to me in my own current circumstances. I learned from “hearing” their testimonies. I grew from their examples of faith and trust and courage. And you will, too. {NOTE: If you want to connect with women of faith this summer, but cannot commit to a group study, this Bible study is ideal. You will find your one-on-one time with each woman in the Bible incredibly faith-building as you form friendships with these past women of faith.}
GROUP BENEFITS: In addition to your one-on-one time each week, you can experience the Summer Bible Study with a group of friends once a week. Truth be told, I didn’t think there could be any new insights that my present-day friends (in my small group of 4) could share that I hadn’t already picked up on during my one-on-one time the preceding week. I was so wrong! The reason for this is that my friends and I connected with the “woman of the week” in different ways, depending on our own life experiences. This helped me to see my new friend from a different perspective, one I’d not considered before, and brought her even farther out of the pages of Biblical history. It also helped me to understand and appreciate my present-day friends better as they shared the experiences that have molded them into the women of faith they are today.
Whether you experience the Summer Bible Study alone or with others, you can expect to grow, to be challenged, and to have your perspective changed.
The Summer Bible Study began simply as a way for me to find a way to connect with the women of the Bible. I knew all about these women from my years of growing up in the church and then attending Bible College, but I didn’t feel like I really knew them personally. I didn’t connect with them.
And I really wanted to.
With my first attempt, I realized that I was too unorganized and lacked the accountability to stay on track. So, I made a plan. I prepped. I organized. I invited. My next attempt was so rewarding that it was worth the feeling of failure I felt from the first.
Here’s why…
This Summer Bible Study is about CONNECTING.
To Women in the Word
I had a desire to feel connected to the women I’d read about in the Word. I felt I could learn a lot from these ladies if I could bypass the obstacles (time, culture), focus on our commonalities (shared experiences) and really get to know them as they were (off the pedestal, preconceived ideas aside).
To Women in My Life
I also had a desire to feel more connected to the women in my life in the present. One night a week, my small group of friends came together to share our discoveries about these women in the Word. I gained a deeper appreciation for each of them, came to understand some of their own experiences better and fell in love with each of their hearts as they shared their own connections with our mutual Biblical friend that week.
Do you have a desire to feel more connected to the women in the Word and to the women in your life?
Before we moved overseas, we lived in the Southern US, which on the surface is a very friendly culture. We greet strangers and acquaintances with a “Hi, how are you?” You greet friends with a warm hug and a big smile and it’s great! But even at church we don’t just go around hugging everyone, right? We hug those that we love. Then we moved to Russia.There, it was different. People were not overly friendly, never greeted a stranger in the street, and I was usually grateful to be ignored.But in the conservative church, we kissed.On the lips. Men kissed men and women kissed women. Good times. Although at the time it was my least favorite part of church, looking back, I recognize that it was a very important part of fellowship. They took it seriously as a commandment and cheerfully (or not), kissed one another. A dry peck, and a quick hug if you were friends or a loving embrace if you were dear friends. They always made sure to greet every single person.In our youth group, there wasn’t as much kissing, but the girls hugged each other, and the guys shook each other’s hands, every single one. In a harsh culture, there was a comforting familiarity in that way of greeting each one. No one was left out of the greeting.
Now we live in a different country, in an even more traditional culture and, guess what. They kiss here, too. But it’s different.Here it’s the whole culture–not just the church–that is prone to kissing. Again, women-to-women, and it’s a kiss-kiss on the cheeks (left to right). It’s sweet, and all the while they are telling you how good it is to see you again and asking how you are, and how your family is and how your parents are. Even guys sometimes do a cheek-to-cheek thing that is not kissing, or a forehead bump, while clasping each other’s right hands. Every person in the room is greeted with a kiss or a handshake.
When we have people over, there is a ceremony of greeting and kissing that is not to be blown off casually. For instance, when guests come to our house for coffee, our whole family comes to the door, and we say, “It’s good that you came.”And their reply is, “It is good that we found you (at home).” If it is a man, I will shake his hand while we say this, and if it is a woman, we will be busy kissing each other’s cheeks, asking about the kids, if I’ve talked to my mom recently, if I’m tired (I’m supposed to be, because that means that I worked hard today, but I’m supposed to deny it). If we are really close, or it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, we will kiss each other’s cheeks more than twice and give each other a tight squeeze.(Hahaha!Some of you are cringing.It’s okay.Albanian women are awesome at making you feel greeted well.) While the women are kissing, the men are shaking hands and asking each other the same questions about their families (literally, “households”), work and whatever it is that men ask each other. After the greeting, the guests are either offered slippers, because Albanians do not wear their shoes in the house, or they are told to leave their shoes on because guests are special (or the floor is really cold and there are no guest slippers). Then they are led into the living room to sit, and the wife or daughter of the house brings a bowl of candy and serves each guest a sweet. This was traditionally llokume (Turkish Delight), but nowadays it is very often a chocolate. Then, coffee or juice is served to the guests. There are special customs regarding foods served and each region has their own, but the importance of it is the honor that they show their guests.
Because it’s such a traditional culture and everyone follows the same rules of greeting, they are used to it, but for those of us who have come from other places, it’s another opportunity to rethink the way we do things, especially those of us from the sometimes-too-casual West. Maybe in our Western churches holy kissing would be hard to reinstate as a scriptural mandate, but it would certainly make it easier for me, because when we go back to the US, it takes me two months to remember that no one there does the kiss-kiss thing. So embarrassing! Barring such a change, here are some things to think about. Do I honor the people who come to my home, to my church, to my social groups? Do I make them feel welcome, loved and accepted? How can I show love and honor to the people that I meet when I am out, especially those who are my brothers and sisters in Christ? Is there a way that I can reach out to those who might be on the lonely fringes, who need to a “holy kiss/handshake/hug”?
Meet Lorinda Fleming:
I was born and raised in small town America, living in three different states. I met my husband in Bible college and we were married after our sophomore year. Right after finishing college, we moved overseas and have lived in three countries in Eastern Europe for the past 22 years, working in local churches. We have three teens who are some of my greatest joys in life. I love Jesus and enjoy iced tea, good books, mountains, quiet days in the country, and spending time with my family. I don’t have a blog, but I love to read other people’s blogs, especially if they are written by friends, and it’s an honor for me to be a guest on Ericka’s blog.
*We had constant rain and Thunderstorms all week, so we kept drawing until we got an activity we could do that day. Saturdays activity was actually drawn on Tuesday and we all wanted to do it so badly that it kept getting top billing each day – if it didn’t rain. We are finally expected to dry out by Saturday afternoon, so our fingers are crossed that we’ll finally get to hit a bucket of balls.We had so much fun geocaching, we kept it up long after the initial 7 I had planned. Free app for your phone called “Geocaching,” complete with a very good gps (even with the clouds!) that walked us right up to the caches. Highly recommend!
Dollar Theater was a re-draw (due to weather). With 25 minutes until the movie started, friends were not able to join us. It was a so-so experience. Dollar Theaters are…well…loud. And no one seems to have heard that you’re suppose to be quiet during the movie. And the popcorn chewing! Ugh!One of my girl’s most enjoyable activities. She loved having her sweet friend over for the afternoon. (My son chose to sleep, as he was recuperating from a 26-mile backpacking trip a few days prior.)We took our Minute-to-Win-It Games on the road to a friend’s house for after-dinner fun on Friday night. Two teams. Family v. Family. Good fun!
Note: I did not take pics of my kids in their skivvies on Thursday, but I will share with you the pajama bottoms my son had on all day. He got these for Christmas and they fool me every time he wears them! (Amazon affiliate link)
I’d love to hear about your Spring Break Staycation! Please share in the comments what you did to make some memories with your kids without breaking the bank.
For years I have resented Black Friday. I remember a time not too long ago in which the “thanks” was kept in “Thanksgiving.” It was a treasured time of counting your blessings and adjusting your attitude to one of gratitude.
