entries do not show recommendations box if no recommendations. Added bible in a year entry, first edited by GPT-4; study only has one header
parent
c15cb8f7a3
commit
a4cae4204a
@ -1,28 +0,0 @@
|
|||||||
<!---->
|
|
||||||
<h1>ditching the Bible in a year reading plan </h1>
|
|
||||||
#christian #bible <br>
|
|
||||||
<br>
|
|
||||||
<p>I'm reading a chapter a day and digging deeper than I ever did on anyone else's pace. </p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<h2>experiencing the Bible in passing </h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>Every church, every Christian friend group I've been in, they say you should read the entire Bible once every year. Tons of daily reading plan PDFs are floating around out there. As someone who deeply enjoys living under external, arbitrary structure and going through prebuilt curriculums, I took to this eagerly. I have used several, probably most often the <a href="https://static.crossway.org/excerpt/1-esv-study-biblereading-plan.3.pdf">one in the back of the ESV study Bible by Crossway</a>. </p>
|
|
||||||
<p>This structure taught me a lot, gave me a lot of things to improve on, and was encouraging and beautiful for sure. But I never really dwelt on any particular verse or passage because of the pressure to complete the full circuit. Each chunk was a lot to read, and if I spent too long on any particular passage, the pace would get out of hand fast if any section was delayed to tomorrow. </p>
|
|
||||||
<p>If a patch of "begots" cropped up in the same section as more dramatic or poetic literature, the temptation to skim was strong. If anything was too difficult or too rich to understand in one pass, I wanted to move on to an easier text. After all, I had prayer and journaling to manage into my schedule as well. To some extent, I was more concerned about finishing than reading. </p>
|
|
||||||
<p>Despite all the concessions I've made over the years, I never completed a yearly plan within a year, not even once. I drowned under compounding missed Epistles and confusing Old Testament narratives, and I'd either start fresh with a new plan or take a break from Bible reading altogether. Even if I read the Bible every single day, the recurring topic of "Bible in a year" showered me with guilt because I could not read like them. If I ever did succeed, I'd imagine it would be akin to driving through a museum and thinking, "that was cool," in passing. </p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<h2>my pace </h2>
|
|
||||||
<p>I'm sure all those people around me receive the maximum blessing of the daily Bible reading plan, reading the full group of passages every single time with full comprehension. And I'm sure they become full of the Word as they do it. But I'm not sure I can. I am a slow reader, a lot of passages make no sense to me the first time, and something pops up in my life at some point during each year that makes it seriously hard to focus at all. </p>
|
|
||||||
<p>For a long time, I viewed this as a major shortcoming to force out of myself. Then, some time last year, as my mom's health sharply declined, I reassessed a lot of things in my life. As part of that, I took a topic that meant something to me, a hopeless situation, and the book that I felt spoke to that, Jeremiah, and told myself that if this one book takes an entire year, that's okay. I wanted to learn from Jeremiah's ministry. </p>
|
|
||||||
<p>I quickly found the best goal for myself is a chapter a day. It retains that delicious arbitrary structure (because obviously the modern divisions of chapters and verses were a man's invention), and it gives me plenty of time to read slowly, pray over verses, and bring in commentaries and sermons as needed. I didn't enforce this pace, though. My goal was to understand the message, not complete the readings, so I gave the daily chapter its best study and if I got nothing out of it, I would try reading it again the next day as a wiser girl. If the chapter was so rich or my life was too distracting, I might have split it up into multiple parts over multiple days until I understood it. Jeremiah 32 took the entire week Mom was in the hospital. Under any other plan, I surely would have been in speedrunning mode or have been avoiding Scripture out of shame, but allowing myself to be slow and meditative allowed this Scripture to be one of the few things I remember from that time. </p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Doing this illuminated how every verse was included by the Spirit for a reason, even the "filler" and "introduction" verses. </p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
this is how I read the Bible, from the first time I really took any interest in the Word until last year. </p>
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
<br>
|
|
||||||
Last updated May 8, 2023. <br>
|
|
||||||
<br>
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
|
|||||||
|
but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:15)
|
||||||
|
do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)
|
Loading…
Reference in New Issue