Wondering Wednesdays

~Photo Credit: (c) All rights reserved by Mars Hill Bible Church

I committed to starting an adventure today.  I have joined Keith Ferrin and others in a four month Bible read through and I'm pretty excited about it. I met Keith by way of Jeff Goins whom I met when a friend recommended Jeff's free book, Wrecked. (Yes, I recommend it along with In-Between.) I read a guest post from Keith and he also gave away a copy of his book, 10 Tips for Liking the Bible (Because Believing It's True Is Not Enough).  I haven't even read all of the 10 tips yet, but some of them resonated with me and when Keith gave the challenge for the new year, I decided to jump in.  You can read about the challenge here and join me if you like - I'd love to do this with others!

The first part of the challenge is to read the whole Bible in four months.  Since it seems like making it through the Bible in a year is usually the big accomplishment, this can feel a bit overwhelming.  If you put it in the perspective of reading the whole Lord of the Rings Trilogy in four months, it seems more doable. 

I guess I "cheated" just a little bit because I went ahead and started before the new year when I had some time and after I finished my advent devotionals.  I figured I could get some of that reading checked off so that if some days get busy and I don't set aside as much time as I want to that I won't get too far behind schedule. 

It's funny about a goal like this.  We play mind games with ourselves sometimes.  I just confessed that I "cheated" by starting my reading earlier.  I will have taken an extra week to do the reading if I finish on time - whoa...how "bad" is that?  If I remember that I'm ahead, I might not prioritize as well because I have space not to fall behind.  Who am I cheating now?  Then if someone else is ahead of me, I might feel like I'm failing if I have only ready half of the Bible by April.  Really?  We need to chunk some of these thoughts out the window and only keep the ones that spur us on. 

For example, Keith recommends that you do not set an amount of reading that you need to do each day but rather a time allotment.  He said it changes the way you read.  I have found that it really does.  I just look up at the clock and instead of trying to read a certain number of chapters before it gets too late, I feel more like I would like to get to a certain part of the story before my time runs out.  I don't really worry if I'm getting enough chapters read, I just get caught up in the story.  This is much better.  Yes, there will likely be points at which I need to see where I stand if I want to make the four month goal and then I might need to set aside more time for reading.  By looking at time rather than quantity, it has made me aware of the time I spend looking at facebook could be spent reading this really great Book.  If you were in the middle of a novel, you could easily set aside the computer to find out what happens next.  Since we "know" the story in the Bible, we tend to not keep the sense of anticipation and so more easily set it aside.  It has occurred to me that what if I could read and read the Bible and be more absorbed in the ways of God because I knew the whole story so well, that this would be of great benefit in the whole of my life.  I enjoy word studies and topic discussions too, but these would make more sense as the whole of The Book seeps into my soul. 

I'm looking forward to this adventure and would love to have you join me.  I plan to try to post what I'm learning or wondering about on Wednesdays.  Let's call it Wondering Wednesdays.  I'll tell you more about what I'm wondering about next week!

I have some other plans for my Saturday posts.  I'll tell you about that Saturday.