Hello!

Hello everyone! My name is James Pate. Some of you may know me from my blogs, James' Thoughts and Musings, and James' Ramblings.

Don't fret---I will continue to write on my other blogs, hopefully every day. Also, I will not be writing every day on this new blog of mine---"James' Quiet Times." So the best place to read my regular thoughts is on my other blogs!

So why am I starting "James' Quiet Times"? I'd like to have a blog that contains my thoughts on every chapter of Scripture. For the past year, or maybe even longer than that, I have blogged through my weekly quiet times, which are my studies of Scripture every Sabbath day. Essentially, I study a chapter each week, as I read the chapter and commentaries on it. I've blogged all the way through I-II Kings and Ecclesiastes, but, for other books, I've blogged through some chapters but not others. It was when I arrived at I Kings in my study that I decided to blog through each chapter that I read. Before I got to I Kings, however, I didn't blog through every single chapter.

And so, whenever I feel the desire, I will write a post here about one of my past quiet times. My goal is eventually to have a post about every chapter of Scripture. Some people read my other blogs for that purpose---to find thoughts about a particular chapter of the Bible, as they try to understand it for themselves.

It will take me a while to post on my past weekly quiet times, which encompass the Pentateuch, Joshua-II Samuel, and the prophets. On this blog, I will copy and paste from my other blog my posts that I have written on chapters from those books---for my weekly quiet times, and, sometimes, my daily quiet times. And I will write new posts here on the chapters that I have not covered on my other blog.

I want to emphasize that I am a work in progress. In this new blog, I will be using notes that I wrote from 1999-2008---and, as you can imagine, I did not read the Bible in the exact same way throughout all of those years! How I approach Scripture now is not the same as how I approached it in the past---though there is some overlap. In many cases, what will probably happen on this blog is that I'll share my thoughts from back then, and discuss where I am today in comparison.

My quiet times have changed over the years. One reason is that I have changed as a person. But another reason is that I have and use more resources today. As a result, in my opinion, my write-ups on my weekly quiet times nowadays---the ones that I write each week for my other blog---are better than what I was coming up with a long time ago.

I could redo my weekly quiet times on the books that I studied in the past, but I really don't have the time or the energy to do so. For me, a weekly quiet time can be an all-day affair! I spend enough time doing my current weekly quiet times, and so I don't want to redo my past weekly quiet times as well!

At the same time, I feel that I learned some decent stuff, even before I got the resources that I use today. Or, let me say this: I think that my studies through the Pentateuch and Joshua-II Samuel were good, whereas my studies through the prophets (except Isaiah, who was fascinating) were rather stale. But we'll see how things turn out! Maybe I'll look at my weekly quiet times through the prophets and notice some gems that I can share!

I hope that this blog can help people. As I said, you most likely won't find a post here every day. There may even be gaps of time between each post! But, as time passes, this will hopefully become a blog that shares insights on every chapter of the Bible, as well as chronicles where I have been in my relationship to it.

Welcome! And enjoy!