How to Highlight in the Bible

2 Timothy 3:16-17; Romans 8:37-39; 1 John 4:9-11

Sisters! We give you permission to HIGHLIGHT IN YOUR BIBLE! 

As Catholics, the Word of God is very important to us - we call it Sacred Scripture because it is in fact sacred. But the Bible is also the love story of God toward humanity. It is a tool of education, edification, and guidance. It is a history story and promise teller. When we love something, we dive into it whole hearted. When we love someone, we want to know everything about them - what they like and dislike, what makes them happy, their past, their plans for the future... The Bible is a tool to understand whom we love: God. It also helps us understand just how much He loves us. When we come across something that stands out to us, it is ok to mark that in the Book. Just like in school, we highlight the things that are important, or that we need to study, or that we need to memorize. We highlighted the things that would be on the test. Well Sisters, we will be tested on the Bible on our day of Judgement. Our just and loving God will ask us how we loved Him & how we loved others and the Bible is one way of learning how to do these two things. 

Just like note taking, there are also a handful of ways to highlight in our Bibles. Here are some photos (we love visuals!) to show some approaches to highlighting:  

Here, our reader highlighted a verse that stood out to her in Ruth, chapter 2. It is simple statement that pulled on her heart. 

Here in Nehemiah, our reader highlighted the block of verses, then took notes after. The highlighted words get the entire section marked together and the blue pen was used to make important words stand out on top of that. 

Ok - we know it looks like a LOT. But hear us out. Please know that these color tabs took several years (10) of studying to compile - do not be overwhelmed! Here, these tabs show different topics in the Bible. This reader chose colors to match themes or topics so that when she wanted to look up verses that related to Mary, she could flip to all the pink tabs. Here pink is Mary, green is Jesus, and orange are the sacraments (each with a letter for the seven. i.e. B=Baptism R=reconciliation M=marriage E=eucharist). If themes are your preference, you can use highlighters or even color pencils! Just keep a key taped to the front of your Bible so you remember what all the colors mean. There are many topics you can look up or "code". Say we study the theme of Charity (coming to HOMWF October 2014!), you can pick a dedicated color for verses that have to do with charity. It's all how your mind works. Mark as you go; do a little more each time. 

So grab those highlighters, color pencils, or markers - we are diving into the Bible together as HOMWF Sisters - we have some studying to do!! 

Did you grab that highlighter? Post us a photo on Instagram using #HOMWFhighlight to show us your marked verses :) We'd love to see what color you chose!