It All Begins with Grace.

Welcome to the Gathered Grace Journal, a place where watercolor, history, faith, and the little pieces of everyday life come together.

There is something about a blank piece of watercolor paper that has always fascinated me.

At first, there is nothing there.

Just white space.

Then comes water. A little pigment. A brushstroke that doesn't always travel exactly where I intended it to go. One color wanders into another. Sometimes the water creates an edge I hadn't planned. Sometimes a color dries lighter than I expected. And every once in a while, what looked like a mistake becomes my favorite part of the entire painting.

Little by little, something begins to appear.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons watercolor has captured my heart.

It reminds me so much of grace.

Grace has a way of meeting us in unfinished places.

It finds us in the parts of our lives that don't look quite the way we imagined they would. It enters the mess, the uncertainty, the waiting, the mistakes and the ordinary moments, and somehow God begins creating something beautiful there.

Not always instantly.

Not always in the way we expected.

But brushstroke by brushstroke.

Piece by piece.

Grace gathers.

The Story Behind the Journal

Gathered Grace Collective began with a love for creating.

I paint small watercolor scenes, often on greeting cards, inspired by the things we encounter in everyday life: fruit gathered together, pumpkins in autumn, sheep standing quietly in a field, flowers, roads, farm scenes, changing seasons and all sorts of ordinary little things.

But somewhere along the way, I began realizing that these paintings were making me think about something beyond what was on the paper.

A blueberry wasn't simply a blueberry anymore.

An orange wasn't simply an orange.

A road could make me think about faith and the uncertainty of not knowing what waits around the next bend.

A sheep could remind me of the Shepherd who knows His own.

A collection of tiny berries could make me think about how easily we overlook God's smallest provisions while waiting for something enormous.

And then, one morning, an idea came.

Actually, it came at about 4:30 in the morning.

Because apparently inspiration does not always respect normal business hours.

I woke with the thought:

What if the watercolor paintings became devotionals?

What if every little scene had a story?

What if we could take something ordinary, discover a piece of history connected to it, open Scripture together and see what God might teach us through something we otherwise would have walked right past?

And with that thought, the idea for this journal began.

Why History?

If you spend much time here, you'll discover something about me rather quickly:

I love history.

I love discovering the stories behind ordinary things.

I love wondering how people lived generations ago, what they endured, what brought them joy, what they created with their hands and what they trusted God for when life became difficult.

History reminds us that we aren't the first people to wait.

We aren't the first people to struggle.

We aren't the first people to wonder what God is doing.

And we certainly aren't the first people to discover His faithfulness in unexpected places.

Sometimes an ordinary object sitting in front of us carries generations of stories we have simply forgotten.

An orange, for example, is something most of us can pick up at the grocery store without much thought. But there was a time when receiving an orange at Christmas was an extraordinary treat for a child.

A handmade quilt can be beautiful hanging on a wall, but quilts also carry stories of necessity, family, resourcefulness and pieces of fabric carefully saved because nothing could afford to be wasted.

A field, a barn, a flower, a road, a cup of tea, a loaf of bread...

Ordinary things have stories.

And sometimes those stories help us see an old truth with new eyes.

That's what I hope to gather here.

Watercolor, History & the Word

The devotionals you'll find in the Gathered Grace Journal will often begin with one of my original watercolor paintings.

From there, we'll wander backward.

We'll uncover a true piece of history connected with the subject of the painting. Sometimes it may come from American history. Sometimes we may travel much farther back. Sometimes the story may be connected to an ordinary household object, a tradition, a person, a place or a moment nearly forgotten.

Then we'll bring that story alongside Scripture.

Not because history replaces God's Word.

Quite the opposite.

Scripture is the anchor.

History simply gives us another window through which to look.

And perhaps, somewhere between an old story, a watercolor painting and an ancient passage of Scripture, we'll recognize something about our own lives.

Gathering the Little Things

The name Gathered Grace has become increasingly meaningful to me.

Because isn't that so often how we experience God's goodness?

We want the whole picture.

God often gives us a piece.

We want the complete answer.

He gives us enough light for the next step.

We want tomorrow's provision.

He places today's bread in our hands.

And sometimes we don't recognize just how much grace surrounds us until we begin gathering those pieces together.

A conversation.

An answered prayer.

A beautiful morning.

An unexpected opportunity.

A lesson learned through disappointment.

Someone showing kindness at exactly the right moment.

Strength we didn't know we had until we needed it.

A Scripture we've read twenty times suddenly speaking directly into the twenty-first.

One piece may not seem remarkable.

But gathered together?

We begin to see the faithfulness of God woven throughout an entire life.

A Little Something to Gather

That is why you'll see a section in these devotionals called A Little Something to Gather.

It will be an invitation to linger for a moment.

To ask a question.

To consider an application.

To notice something.

Because I don't want these devotionals simply to be something we read, nod at and forget five minutes later.

I want us to gather something from them.

Something to carry into the day.

Something to pray about.

Something to remember.

Maybe even something that changes the way we look at an ordinary object the next time we encounter it.

It All Begins with Grace

Maybe you're here because you enjoy watercolor.

Maybe you stumbled across one of my cards.

Maybe you love history as much as I do.

Maybe you're looking for a devotional.

Or perhaps you arrived here carrying questions, disappointment, hope, exhaustion, excitement or some complicated mixture of all of them.

Wherever you're coming from, you're welcome here.

You don't have to have everything figured out.

Neither do I.

We are simply going to gather.

We'll gather stories from yesterday.

We'll gather beauty from ordinary things.

We'll gather wisdom from Scripture.

We'll gather reminders of God's faithfulness.

And along the way, I hope we'll become a little better at recognizing the grace that was already surrounding us.

Because before the finished painting, there was a blank page.

Before the story was completed, there were unfinished chapters.

Before we understood what God was doing, there was trust.

And underneath all of it...

there was grace.

“For by grace you have been saved by faith. Nothing you did could ever earn this salvation, for it was the love gift from God that brought us to Christ.”
Ephesians 2:8, TPT

Welcome to the Gathered Grace Journal.

I'm glad you're here.

Let's see what we can gather.

With grace,
Becky
Gathered Grace Collective