I have found crying before God–—whether in confession or simply out of joy and thanksgiving because of his graciousness and mercies over a long period of time–—is salutary.  It ends with a sense of genuine peace with God.  God deserves our sincere humility before him. A thought came to me that perhaps the Holy Spirit is preparing my conscience and spirit for that time when I will personally bow before him in the life to come and perhaps sooner than later.

When was the last time you found yourself crying before God?  I can’t remember anyone sharing with me or others that they cry before God.  There was a time when the same could be said about me, that is, crying before God was not an event I experienced regularly or even rarely.
This is not about crying before God in pleading for something or something to happen.  It’s not even about crying before God in confession of sin.  This is about crying before God in humility and thanksgiving for his many mercies in your life.
I was reading Psalm 86 when I found myself shedding tears before God in awe and gratefulness for his great mercies in my life over the years.  At this juncture in time, I have to recognize I’ve been granted a long life.  In Psalm 90: 10, the Psalmist says: “As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years, yet their pride is only trouble and tragedy; for it quickly passes, and we disappear.”  Well, I recently passed not just that first number–—but lo and behold, even that second number!
This life has suffered many broken bones, near-death experiences, such as riding a moped and striking a car that turned in front of me, being lifted off the bike into the air and soaring freely over the car to just missing a curb.  It happened in Montpellier, France returning home from class at the university.  My very first thought was in French, “Ça y est” (This is it!).  My immediate second thought and prayer were in English, “I commit my spirit to you, O Lord.”  Soaring in the air, I thought I would die.  Besides many broken bones and near-death misses, my life has consisted of not a few disappointments and many failures on my part.
As I look back on life, I’m reminded of many happy, positive moments, relationships, and experiences.  I’m not a pessimist or an optimist.  I tend to be a realist, which accounts for my seeing both failures and progress in my growth as a believer and follower of Jesus Christ.
I find myself acknowledging much of what David acknowledged in his life.  I never imagined one day I would confess, as David did, that my “iniquities are more than the hairs of my head.” (Psalm 40: 12) And my head is quite full of hair.  One recent morning, I was reading Psalm 86, a prayer of David.  As I read through this beautiful prayer, I found myself first tearing up and then practically sobbing.  It wasn’t a painful sobbing, but rather a humble and joyful sobbing.  It was because I was so struck with how merciful God has been to me all these years. This wasn’t a first-time experience for me, as it has happened before in these later years. There’s a beautiful Black spiritual song entitled, “He Never Failed Me Yet.”  How true that has been in my experience and relationship with God in Christ, that is, He is always faithful despite my frequent unfaithfulness.
In Psalm 86, David prays, “In the day of my trouble I shall call upon You, for You will answer me.”  He has faithfully done that for me.  Further on, he prays, “But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness and truth.”  This speaks to his many, many mercies in my life.
At one point David prays this–—a petition I am making mine: Teach me, Your way, O Lord; I will walk in your truth; Unite my heart to fear your name.”
I have found crying before God–—whether in confession or simply out of joy and thanksgiving because of his graciousness and mercies over a long period of time–—is salutary.  It ends with a sense of genuine peace with God.  God deserves our sincere humility before him. A thought came to me that perhaps the Holy Spirit is preparing my conscience and spirit for that time when I will personally bow before him in the life to come and perhaps sooner than later.
Have you cried before God lately?  You might find it to be as precious an experience as I have.  It doesn’t hurt at all.  It beneficially heals and rightly humbles.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.

The Reformers knew that for the church to remain faithful to Christ, the church and her congregants needed both to read and to study the Bible. The 1560 Geneva Bible embodied that commitment. We should be thankful for the gifted teachers and leaders of our own day who have applied their labors to publishing quality study Bibles that are faithful to God’s Word. May we take advantage of their labors. Take up a good study Bible and read.

In 1560, an exiled group of pastors and theologians made history. They published the first full edition of the Geneva Bible. It was a remarkable feat on many fronts.
These scholars who worked on the Geneva Bible had been leaders of the Reformation in England and Scotland. When “Bloody Mary” took the throne, she threw into reverse the advancing Reformation, taking the nation back to Roman Catholicism. Britain’s Reformers found themselves in prison, martyred, or in exile. Many went to Calvin’s Geneva.
Calvin wasn’t much for idle hands. Florentine jewelers who had converted to Protestantism were also among the exiles who came to Geneva. Most of their prior work revolved around saint’ statues, rosaries, and the like. They needed something new to do. Calvin suggested they make watches. The rest is (watchmaking) history. So, too, the British scholars who came to Geneva needed to work. Calvin suggested they publish a Bible. The rest is English Bible history.
The Geneva Bible was the first English Bible to use verse divisions, thanks to the work of Robertus Stephanus. Prior editions of the English Bible had chapter breaks only. Stephanus, a brilliant linguist, published several editions of the Greek New Testament. He introduced his innovative verse divisions in his 1551 edition. Nine years later, these same verse numbers appeared in the Geneva Bible.
The Geneva Bible was also the first Bible to have study notes or annotations. The first edition had these annotations in the Gospels only. This edition also had woodcut illustrations, maps, and even tables, which provided a cross-referencing index for names and topics. As later editions rolled off the press, more annotations for the rest of the canonical books appeared. Some later editions even modified the notes or replaced them altogether. Then, as now, the book of Revelation posed special challenges to interpreters and annotators. Later editions fully replaced the notes it had published on John’s Apocalypse.
The Geneva Bible was intentionally affordable. Pocket-sized editions were made available, as were inexpensive editions of the New Testament. The Geneva Bible was intended to be read. It was also intended to be studied. And it was. It was the Bible of William Shakespeare, John Bunyan, and the Pilgrims and Puritans who landed in the New World. A Scottish law from 1579 required “every Householder with 300 merks [silver coins]” to own one. Despite King James’ attempts in 1611 at positioning his new translation in the market, the Geneva Bible held sway well into the seventeenth century. Countless readers were helped by the notes reflecting the doctrinal understanding of the Reformation.
There has been no shortage of English Bibles since the Geneva Bible. Neither has there been a shortage of study Bibles since the Geneva Bible. By way of an informal nonscientific study, I counted the study Bibles listed in Christian Book Distributors Bibles catalog for spring/summer 2015. Not counting children‘s Bibles, the number topped one hundred, among them a facsimile edition of the 1560 Geneva Bible. All of these study Bibles except the Geneva Bible date from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
It would not be too much of a stretch to speak of the century spanning from 1917 to the present as “The Century of the Study Bible.“ In 1917, Oxford University Press published the Scofield Study Bible. This Bible had first been published in 1909 with a system of cross-references. But the 1917 edition had copious notes promoting a dispensational scheme of theology.
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Commend them to the grace of God, trusting in your own heart that God loves them even more than you do and that his plan for them is even better than your own. Pray for them and pray with them as you part and make this your final and ultimate petition before the Lord: nevertheless, not as I will but as you will. Oh, and remember to treat them like adults. 

I won’t ever forget the day we dropped Nick at college. We had driven him down to Louisville, Kentucky where he had enrolled in pre-seminary studies at Boyce College. We had helped get his little dorm room all set up. We had dropped by the bookstore and picked up the last of his textbooks. We had attended the orientation meetings and the chapel service. We had huddled together to pray. And now there was just one thing left to do—begin our journey home and leave him behind.
As I drove along Lexington Road and made my way toward I-64, Aileen sat beside me and wept. She did not weep gently. She did not weep in such a way as to have a few tears trickle gently down her cheeks. No, she wept as if her heart had been torn in two. Hours later we arrived home and, as we began to settle in for the evening, I had my own moment of emotion when it came time to lock the doors, for I realized that I was no longer locking all my children in to the safety of our home, but this time locking one of them out.
We adjusted quickly, of course. Nick thrived at Boyce and we took great joy in his joy. How could we lament his absence when he was doing so well, learning so much, and growing so substantially in wisdom and godliness? Two years later we had to do it again when Abby headed down to join him. We found her departure a little bit easier having gone through it once, but also a little bit harder in that it came in the midst of a pandemic that had very nearly closed the border between our countries. In August of this year we will do it all again, Lord willing, when Michaela journeys down to take up her studies there. This time we will be empty-nesters, at least for the duration of the school year.
A friend recently asked for some guidance for parents whose children are leaving home, perhaps to go to school or perhaps to join the military or perhaps just to begin an independent life. “What counsel might you give them” she asked? I thought I’d take a few minutes to consider it. Here’s what I came up with.
First, I would encourage parents to deliberately begin loosening their oversight well before their children leave.
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