A little over 20 years ago I was baptized. Immediately afterwards I set aside time in my daily activities to read a chapter of the Bible every evening. I think I got through part of the Gospels before it degraded into reading a chapter…any chapter each night. Consequentally enough I got to know those really short chapters in the epistles really well, without necessarily ever studying the meaning behind it.
It degraded in other ways. Almost in a OCD sort of way I used this Bible reading as a way to prove to myself that I was good enough to get into heaven. The concept of grace hadn’t fully manifested itself in my own mind. I can remember many an awkward time where I had to excuse myself from my friends on overnight high school marching band trips to pull out my Bible and read it like a good soldier. Sometimes I was too tired to really understand what was being studied. Eventually in my mid-twenties I gave up this schedule.
Now at church we are being encouraged to read the Bible through in a year. We’ll all be reading the same schedule with the same set of scripture – Old Testament – New Testament – and Psalms and Proverbs. I’m convinced that it is a good idea to read both the Old and New Testaments at the same time so that one won’t get bogged down in Leviticus or some geneology chapter and quit altogether. I’m being told that each week we will hear some lesson at church about the reading which we were to have read that previous week.
So it’s been good. Yesterday I read about the birth of our Earth in Genesis 1 and the birth of our Savior in Matthew 1. I’m not sure how far I’ll get in it. But I am trying. And I got another easier to read translation – the Message, rather than read the standard NKJV. I feel as though at this point in my life I’m able to distinguish between a core translation (NKJV) and a paraphrase. And yet in my own mind, I feel that for personal study the paraphrase (the Message) works best for me.
And I’m hoping that this won’t turn into some type of salvation game that we all play. I.E. if you don’t read your Bible you’re not a good Christian. Instead I’m hoping that I’ll learn new things about it. Remind me of Bible stories and I hadn’t touched on it a while and bring new things to light which I had never studied.