Creating Intentional Time with God
Angela’s collage art in her diary.
Maybe it’s collage art or perhaps it’s junk journaling— but surely it’s Angela’s story from her 2025 season of conferencing.
Photo by Angela
In the July 4, 2025, Heart Matters email newsletter, the Scriptio-Visio Divina Blend offered readers an invitation to collage as a creative rest. The invitation included taking 5-10 minutes to gather stuff. Old newspapers. Bottle caps. Receipts. Magazine pages. Flower petals, whatever is around. I didn’t have any of that stuff. I had stickers, conference programs, a few boarding passes, quotes, receipts, and clothes tags lying in a pile. A pile of memorial stones to remind me of God’s faithfulness, miracles, and the places the Lord allowed me to go, and the people the Lord invited me to meet. From May 28 to June 14, I attended four conferences. And I was excited and exhausted. I experienced divine intervention.
I planned it like this:
Saturday afternoon, I would arrive at the University of Notre Dame in Indianapolis to present a paper on Sunday at 8 a.m.
Monday evening, I would return home, pack, and sleep.
Tuesday morning, I would wake and drive to Cape May, NJ, for a 2 p.m. presentation. It’s a four-and-a-half-hour drive and was easier than navigating airports and car rentals.
Thursday afternoon, I would return home, pack, and then take a Lyft to the airport in Minneapolis with my husband.
For context, I’d already returned home from Niagara Falls, New York, before unpacking and repacking for Indianapolis. I rested well at this conference. A two-hour prayer nap. A walk to the falls, twice admiring God’s beauty. How wonderful to be along, walking in God’s presence, focused on his footprints in my life. I feasted on lectures and workshops about spiritual direction. Six days before the next conference, I closed my booking calendar, slept late, exercised, and lingered in God’s presence, sometimes doing nothing. (Doing nothing is the spiritual practice I love deeply. And it’s not all that easy to let go, stop thinking, planning, and organizing. Always doing.)
Divine intervention happened like this:
Friday night, after packing, I received a text from the airline that my Saturday morning flight had been cancelled. No explanation. Just cancelled. I could get a later flight with a nine-hour layover, but then I would miss my connecting flight. I could leave at 6 a.m. Sunday morning, but there was no connecting flight. I was presenting at 8 a.m.
Did you get all that?
Saturday night, in between pauses with the airline representative, I sent an email to the conference coordinator and the panel chair asking to present Sunday morning via Zoom. They agreed. The pauses were a discussion about a refund versus an airline credit. Agreement not so easy. Once all was settled, I fell back in my chair and silently thanked God for stepping in. As the psalmist says, when the LORD delights in our way, and when we are right with God, the LORD strengthens us for the journey. We may trip up, but we will not fall on our faces. (Psalm 37:23-24 NRSV, The Voice). I rose Sunday morning, fresh and prepared to present a ten-minute paper presentation. I could have planned my travels differently. I was saving money. God stepped in.
As the psalmist says, when the LORD delights in our way, and when we are right with God, the LORD strengthens us for the journey. We may trip up, but we will not fall on our faces. (Psalm 37:23-24 NRSV, The Voice).
Angela’s memorial stones from the APC and IABA of Americas conferences, and a one-day retreat. What stones resonate with you ?
Quiet time with the Lord
That’s why my pile of memorial stones has been cut and glued into the pages of a small black notebook that I carried to all four conferences. I’m not sure it’s a collage. Collaging is a montage of images to create a single work—art on paper. Yet, and still, Fillipo Imbrighi explains, “Collage is another way of telling a story.” The visual artist based in Rome says, “Cutting elements and then merging them, overlapping them until the story speaks to you and the narrative is ready to be told.”
My collection of cut, pasted, and taped images on the page narrates the story of each conference. When I was in Niagara Falls, I asked a seminary representative if he had stickers. He said, No. In Minneapolis, the same seminary set up an exhibition table, and there were stickers. Asking about stickers led to a spirit-filled conversation about preaching and seminary life. I also won the raffle: a journal and $10 gift card to Starbucks.
If it’s not a collage, it may be called “junk journaling.” Experts say there’s a difference. Junk journaling is organizing all your discarded stuff —leftovers—ribbons, cards, magazine covers, postcards, buttons, stickers, tea bag quotes, church bulletins, dried flowers—in a diary/ journal/notebook. I’ve been filling diaries, journals, and notebooks with ephemera for years. It makes sense to return to this form with intention. Intention to slow down, reflect, rest, and create visual memories. Junk journaling is like laying memorial stones to remind me of God’s faithfulness.
The combination of junk journaling and collaging has become a quiet time with the Lord. I set time to be still. I reflect on the stuff in my hand. I remember where I was, who I spoke to, and what happened. I offer a prayer of thanksgiving, sometimes forgiveness. When I pasted the APC letters, gratitude poured over me. It’s a chaplaincy conference I attend with my husband yearly. Yet I have made friends and connections. This year, a new directee for soul care. The hats on the page brought me to a moment of forgiveness. I attended a one-day retreat but returned home unfulfilled and a little bit grumbly.
Whichever I am doing, junk journaling or collaging,
it’s better than doom scrolling,
it draws me closer to God,
it doesn’t require me to think too hard,
it helps me linger, look, and seek beyond my imagination.
It’s become intentional time with God.
