• 70 prompts
  • Checked October 2026

Bible Writing Prompts

Retell a story, write as someone who was there, reword a verse, or write through the church year.

Bible Writing Prompts

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  1. Put Isaiah 40:31 into your own words, for a runner near the end of a long race.Isaiah 40:31. They shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
  2. Retell the good Samaritan on a road you know, with people you might meet there.Luke 10. Angle: two pass by on the other side, and the third one stops.
  3. Retell the week of creation as a diary with seven short entries.Genesis 1 and 2. Angle: day seven is the hard one to write, because nothing is made on it.

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All 70 prompts

Retell a story 18

  • Retell Daniel's night in the lions' den as the king tells it the next morning. Daniel 6. Angle: the king rose very early and went in haste to the den.
  • Retell David and Goliath, and stop the story one minute before the stone is thrown. 1 Samuel 17. Angle: five smooth stones out of the brook, and a king's armor left behind.
  • Retell Ruth's choice to stay with Naomi as a letter Ruth writes many years later. Ruth 1. Angle: whither thou goest, I will go. What that cost her, and what came of it.
  • Retell the baby in the basket among the reeds as the river might tell it. Exodus 2. Angle: an ark of bulrushes, laid in the flags by the river's brink.
  • Retell the calming of the storm in the present tense, one short sentence at a time. Mark 4. Angle: the waves beat into the ship, and one man is asleep on a pillow.
  • Retell the crossing of the sea in ten sentences, the last one written from the far shore. Exodus 14. Angle: the waters stand like a wall on the right hand and on the left.
  • Retell the fall of Jericho as a countdown, one line for each of the seven days. Joshua 6. Angle: six days of marching once around the city, then seven times on the seventh.
  • Retell the feeding of the five thousand as a list: what there was, who ate, what was left. John 6. Angle: five barley loaves, two small fishes, and twelve baskets left over.
  • Retell the flood from the first drop of rain to the dove that does not come back. Genesis 7 and 8. First line: The rain began on a day like any other.
  • Retell the good Samaritan on a road you know, with people you might meet there. Luke 10. Angle: two pass by on the other side, and the third one stops.
  • Retell the last chapter of Jonah: a man, a plant that grows in a night, and a very bad mood. Jonah 4. Angle: the gourd came up in a night and perished in a night.
  • Retell the lost sheep with the numbers kept in: ninety-nine and one. Luke 15. Angle: tell it from the wilderness where the ninety-nine are left to wait.
  • Retell the prodigal son, and end one sentence before he reaches home. Luke 15. Angle: when he was still a great way off, his father saw him.
  • Retell the story of Joseph's coat as his brothers might tell it at supper that night. Genesis 37. Angle: their father made Joseph a coat of many colors, and the brothers noticed.
  • Retell the tower of Babel as a building site report, written on the day the work stops. Genesis 11. Angle: the builders can no longer understand one another's speech.
  • Retell the week of creation as a diary with seven short entries. Genesis 1 and 2. Angle: day seven is the hard one to write, because nothing is made on it.
  • Retell the wise and foolish builders as two weather reports for the same storm. Matthew 7. Angle: one house built on rock, one on sand, and the same rain on both.
  • Retell Zacchaeus and the sycamore tree as a notice for the Jericho town board. Luke 19. Angle: he climbed a sycamore tree to see, because he was little of stature.

Write as someone who was there 18

  • Write as a camel driver in the train of the queen of Sheba, on the road to Jerusalem. 1 Kings 10. Angle: a very great train, with camels that carried spices, gold and precious stones.
  • Write as a child sent out to gather manna before the sun gets hot. Exodus 16. Angle: it was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey.
  • Write as a fisherman on the shore, on the morning the nets began to break. Luke 5. First line: We had worked all night and caught nothing.
  • Write as a neighbor who watched the ark being built, plank by plank. Genesis 6. Angle: an ark of gopher wood with three stories, and no rain yet.
  • Write as a soldier in the camp who hears a shepherd boy offer to fight the giant. 1 Samuel 17. First line: He was the youngest, sent with bread for his brothers.
  • Write as a worker hired at the eleventh hour who is paid the same as everyone else. Matthew 20. First line: I had stood in the marketplace all day and nobody had hired me.
  • Write as one of the builders who mended the wall of Jerusalem opposite his own front door. Nehemiah 3. Angle: some of the builders repaired the stretch of wall over against their own house.
  • Write as one of the children who were brought to be blessed and almost sent away. Mark 10. First line: The grown-ups said we were in the way.
  • Write as one of the guests who sent an excuse instead of coming to the great supper. Luke 14. Angle: one had bought a field, one had bought five yoke of oxen, one had just married.
  • Write as one of the nine who were healed on the road and kept on walking. Luke 17. Angle: ten were cleansed and one turned back. You have your reasons.
  • Write as one of the priests who carried a ram's horn trumpet around Jericho. Joshua 6. First line: Six days we walked around the wall and nobody shouted.
  • Write as one of the two men who carried a single cluster of grapes home on a pole. Numbers 13. First line: It took the two of us and a staff to carry one bunch.
  • Write as one of the women who came to the tomb very early in the morning. Luke 24. First line: We brought the spices and worried about the stone.
  • Write as someone at the back of the crowd on the mountain who caught only half of the sermon. Matthew 5. Angle: seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain. Which half did you hear?
  • Write as someone in Nineveh on the day a stranger walks in with a warning. Jonah 3. Angle: an exceeding great city of three days' journey, and he began on the first day.
  • Write as someone standing by the treasury who saw a widow drop in two small coins. Mark 12. First line: The rich put in a great deal, and she put in two mites.
  • Write as the chief butler on the morning he remembers a promise he forgot for two years. Genesis 41. Angle: his words to Pharaoh are, I do remember my faults this day.
  • Write as the servant girl who told her mistress where a sick captain could find help. 2 Kings 5. Angle: the story calls her a little maid, and she is far from her own land.

A verse in your own words 18

  • Put Isaiah 40:31 into your own words, for a runner near the end of a long race. Isaiah 40:31. They shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
  • Put Proverbs 27:17 into your own words, then name the friend who does this for you. Proverbs 27:17. Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.
  • Put Psalm 46:10 into your own words, then describe the quietest place you know. Psalm 46:10. Be still, and know that I am God.
  • Put Psalm 118:24 into your own words, on a morning when you did not want to get up. Psalm 118:24. This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
  • Put Psalm 119:105 into your own words, as someone walking home on a dark road. Psalm 119:105. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
  • Put the first line of Psalm 23 into your own words, for someone who has never seen a sheep. Psalm 23:1. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
  • Put the golden rule of Matthew 7:12 into words a six-year-old could follow. Matthew 7:12. Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
  • Rewrite Ecclesiastes 3:1 for the year you have just had, season by season. Ecclesiastes 3:1. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
  • Rewrite Matthew 5:9 as a job advertisement for a peacemaker. Matthew 5:9. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
  • Rewrite Matthew 6:28 as a letter to someone who worries about what to wear. Matthew 6:28. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin.
  • Say what 1 Corinthians 13:4 says about charity, using only things you have seen people do. 1 Corinthians 13:4. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not.
  • Turn James 1:19 into something to remember in the middle of an argument. James 1:19. Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
  • Turn Micah 6:8 into three plain instructions, one line each. Micah 6:8. To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.
  • Write Galatians 6:9 in your own words, for someone halfway through a long job. Galatians 6:9. Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
  • Write Joshua 1:9 in your own words, as a note to slip into someone's pocket. Joshua 1:9. Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed.
  • Write Philippians 4:8 as a list of things you saw this week that fit it. Philippians 4:8. Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just.
  • Write Proverbs 15:1 in your own words, then a short scene in which it turns out to be true. Proverbs 15:1. A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.
  • Write Proverbs 17:22 in your own words, then tell about a time a laugh helped. Proverbs 17:22. A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.

The seasons of the church year 16

  • Advent: write about the longest wait you remember, and the hour it ended. Isaiah 9, a great light. Fact: Advent starts four Sundays before Christmas.
  • Advent: write the list of what must be ready before a long-awaited guest arrives, and the one thing that never is. Isaiah 40. Fact: Advent is for waiting and getting ready for Christmas.
  • Ash Wednesday: write about the first day of something that will take forty days. Matthew 4. Fact: in Western churches Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and recalls forty days in the desert.
  • Christmas: tell the night in Bethlehem using only what the story itself gives you. Luke 2. Angle: swaddling clothes, a manger, no room in the inn. Add nothing.
  • Christmas: write about a night when there was no room for you, and where you ended up instead. Luke 2. Angle: no room in the inn. Yours can be a full car, a full house or a full table.
  • Easter: write the garden early on the first day of the week, before anyone understands. John 20. Angle: it was still dark, and the stone had been taken away.
  • Easter: write the walk to the village of Emmaus as one of the two who talked the whole way. Luke 24. Fact: the Easter season lasts fifty days.
  • Epiphany: write about following one light across country you do not know. Matthew 2. Fact: the traditional date of Epiphany is January 6.
  • Good Friday: write the afternoon the sky went dark, from the edge of the crowd, in plain short sentences. Luke 23. Angle: there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour.
  • Holy Saturday: write the day in between, when nothing happens and everyone waits. Luke 23. Angle: they rested on the sabbath day. Write the house, the quiet, the door.
  • Holy Thursday: write about a time someone important did a job everyone thought was beneath them. John 13. Fact: many churches hold a washing of feet on the Thursday of Holy Week.
  • Lent: write about something you once gave up, and what you noticed when it was gone. Fact: giving up a pleasure for the 40 days of Lent is a tradition called a Lenten sacrifice.
  • Lent: write forty small kindnesses a street could use, one for each day. Matthew 6. Fact: Lent rests on three pillars: prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
  • Ordinary Time: write about an ordinary Tuesday on which something small went right. Fact: Ordinary Time comes in two spans, one after Christmas Time and a longer one after Easter Time.
  • Palm Sunday: write the road into Jerusalem as a child in the crowd, holding a branch. Matthew 21. Fact: Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, is named for the branches the crowd waved.
  • Pentecost: write the sound of the wind in the house, as someone who was in the room. Acts 2. Fact: Pentecost falls on the fiftieth day of Easter, counting Easter Sunday itself.

How it works

These Bible writing prompts are for a person's own writing, with no lesson attached. All but two name a book and chapter, so the passage can be read first, and the wording quoted is the King James Version's.

Read the full guide

Bible writing prompts for kids

The first two groups suit a child who already knows the story: the flood up to the dove that does not come back, a child sent out to gather manna, a fisherman on the morning the nets began to break. In the second group a bystander does the telling, so the writer needs no long speeches.

Writing prompts for Lent and the rest of the church year

Sixteen prompts are for the church year, Advent to Ordinary Time. Three are for Lent, starting on Ash Wednesday: the first of forty days, forty small kindnesses for a street, and something once given up. Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday have one each.

  • Read the chapter before you write. The best detail is usually one you had forgotten.
  • A verse in your own words is finished when a friend could follow it without the original.

Questions and answers

Are these Catholic writing prompts?

The church year group follows the seasons that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lists: Advent, Christmas, Lent, the Triduum, Easter and Ordinary Time. Other churches keep many of them too. This site belongs to no church.

Are there Bible writing prompts for children?

Yes. The hard part of a story is left outside the frame: David and Goliath stops one minute before the stone is thrown, and Good Friday is the afternoon the sky went dark. Some prompts give a first line to start from.

Do these work as religious writing prompts for a journal?

The verse group does. Each prompt quotes one verse and asks for it in your own words, and then for something of yours: a scene, a list, a letter, the quietest place you know.

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