Sunday, January 14, 2007

Cerulean Sactum's Bible-Reading Plan

Think Christian had a link to Cerulean Sanctum's post entitled "The World's Best Bible-Reading Program." He writes, "While reading through the Bible in a year is a worthy endeavor, it's an artificial one. God's not so much interested in us making it through all 66 books in 365.25 days. What He desires of us is that we understand what we read in His word, ruminate on it, and then do something with what we've read. With some of the plans out there, I could spend an entire year reading the Bible and not remember one whit of it, nor put into practice even one of its commands."

I love his idea. He suggests that instead of trying to read the Bible through in one year, we should read and re-read one chapter as many times as it takes us to "get it" and "live it". I agree with him that the artificial aspect of chapters and verses can really mess up the flow of a book. It wasn't written that way, so why read it that way?

I'm afraid I've used the feast-or-famine approach to Bible reading. I'll pick up a Bible in January, with every intention of reading it through in a year, but then I'll get behind and get discouraged, and then give it up. So then I'll revert to the "read-wherever-it-opens" plan, or the "read what I need to read for next Sunday's lesson" plan. Neither of those are very good either. I'm going to try this plan, and I'll let you know how it works for me.