The beauty we see in creation everywhere and every day undeniably proclaims God’s glory. When we take the time to recognize his amazing splendor and respond with praise, we reflect God’s glory back to him.

My mom knew I loved to write and that I dreamed of one day being published. Although I did a lot of writing throughout my adult life, I started pursuing my writing career full time after I retired from the Navy in 2010. Unfortunately, I never published my writing until after my mom passed away seven years ago today, in 2017. In a sense, her death provided a catalyst for the Be Still series. I wrote the poem that become the heart of Praise: Proclaiming the Glory of God spring when I was home in Pennsylvania helping plan her funeral.

A series of other incidents happened that year that turned the poem into a photo devotional. That summer, I discovered what was then called Amazon Create Space (now Kindle Direct Publishing) where aspiring writers could self-publish their own books in both paper and ebook format.

That same summer I attended a ministry retreat and in a box of free books set out for the taking, I found a simple 8X8 book by photographer Mal Austen. His book, A Season of Rest, a photo meditation on the Psalms, overlaid Scripture verses on photos of nature.

As I flipped through the book, I thought, “Jon and I could do that.”

When we were dating, Jon took hold of my heart when he assembled a slide show of his favorite photos of nature. From sunrise to sunset (and some instrumental music playing in the background) he led me through the beauty and wonder of creation. I felt as if he was giving me a glimpse into his heart and soul. And I thought, “if these pictures reflect this man, then he’s someone I could spend my life with.” That was over thirty years ago and he continues to capture both God’s glory and my heart in photographs. However, for many years only a few were blessed by his art.

I always encouraged Jon to “do something” with all the images he had. With the help of Amazon’s self-publishing function, the inspiration of a photo meditation, and a poem I had written, I decided to give to do that “something” with Jon’s photographs.

I asked Jon to look through his images and find pictures to go along with each verse of my poem and then paired both with scriptures from the Psalm. I kept the format simple: one of Jon’s photos, a verse from a Psalm, a line from my poem, a prayer prompt, and space for the reader to write her own prayer.

I dubbed it our photo devotional. And the Be Still series was born. I had the first edition of Priase finished and up for sale on Amazon in November of that year. Our church organized a fall artisan fair the weekend before Thanksgiving and I used the opportunity to promote and sell our first copies.

As I expanded my writing craft, each book that followed in the Be Still had more content and improved design making me want to go back and give Praise a bit more substance as well. I supposed that it would be devotionals like Wonder and Consider have, but I wasn’t sure about what. Then I spoke about the character of God at a women’s event at our church last year and I discovered that my books demonstrate God’s character in different ways. As I perused Praise, I realized that hidden in the images and the selected verses from Psalm were some interesting and playful attributes of God. Now, seven years and seven books later, I’ve decided to update Praise with this content.

It makes me sad that mom isn’t around to read my books, but I’d like to think she would have enjoyed them. I look forward to the day when we’ll get to enjoy them together in God’s Kingdom and proclaim his glory together forever. I am, however, able to share them with you and will do so as a Praise blog series over the next couple of months.

If you’d like to see all the books currently available in my Be Still series, visit my Be Still page.

All the books in the Be Still series are available on Amazon. Visit my author page Jill English Johnston.

Grace & Peace