The Habit of Bible Reading

Just finished reading Leviticus 12 - 18, with a little help from Bible Gateway.  I was hoping to finish reading through the Bible by year's end - guess I'm not going to make it, still have Genesis, and Exodus to read.  Got the bright idea in OCT 03 to read through the Bible in reverse cannonical order.

I watched my grandpa read the Bible every evening when he got home from the sawmill, and he read it every morning while eating breakfast and getting ready for work.  As a youngster I couldn't see the interest in reading the Bible more than once, after all David still kill's Goliath, Noah still builds the Ark, Abram is still told to "go west young man, go west," and Adam still eats the forbidden fruit.  So I couldn't see what the big deal was.  Grandpa usually read throught he Bible in about a year, and sometimes more than once I would guess.

When I went off to college I found out that my church's denomination had (has) a yearly Bible quiz, and my brother and I ended up participating on the Bible Quiz team that first year in college - my brother ended up being the captain, and I was the team coach.  The small town church we grew up in had nothing of the sort, and this was the first year our church had had a Bible Quiz team, and so none of us knew what we were doing.

This experience caused me to want to start reading the Bible through (in a year like grandpa had done), but I'd get started in Genesis, read through Exodus, then get bogged down in Leviticus.  I'd put down the reading for a while, and then when I picked it back up I had no idea where I had left off in reading.  So I would start over, rinse and repeat.

Eventually I picked up a Bible reading plan, and it had check-off boxes to put a tic mark in for each set of chapters you read.  I eventually did read through the Bible, using that plan - didn't make it in a year, but hey.  So now I've read through the Bible almost 4 times - quite the accomplishment for the boy who couldn't see the worth in reading the Bible more than once.  I now see that every time I read through the same passage I am going through different things in life, and because of that I see different things that I hadn't seen in the previous reading.

Well, I have to run to Sunday School - we are studying Systematic Theology, right now we are looking at the Holy Trinity and some of the heresies that sprung up in the early church.  I will leave you with this thought:  What about you?  How's your own Bible reading plan doing?  Making New Year's resolutions?  I'll challenge you to add some daily (or at least as often as you can get started with) Bible reading to your schedule.

May this Lord's Day be blessed.