Any well-traveled girl will tell you the importance of smart packing. As we jump into John’s gospel, we’ll need to make room for treasures we find along the way, little surprises to make a good journey even better.

You brave soul. Good for you! We can tackle this beautiful book together. How?

For each chapter, there’s a corresponding schedule, a plan to keep us on track. Sermons are linked for easy online access, or you can print the whole thing out if you enjoy manually checking off calendar squares as much as I do. As we wade deeper in, I’ll post chapter summaries of favorite quotes, questions, resources, and aha moments.

I’m typically a safe adventurer. While you won’t find me out hiking mountain ranges or surviving the desert wilds, I love a good epic (and much like Bilbo, I prefer to read said good epic in front of my fireplace with a steaming cup of tea). Curled up with a sweeping journey through a vast landscape with all kinds of perils is my favorite. Should the villain gain too much ground or the challenge be too great, I can slam the book shut and go for a walk. This sort of adventuring allows for limits, boundaries to insulate its readers from insanity. (Because who needs to miss work for weeks due to the carnage of the battle at Hogwarts? Tempting, yes. Practical, no.) Calculated risks—the kind found only in the pages of a book—are my jam.