while today

I’m a regular Bible reader. The guide I use has daily readings for the whole year, and I should be able to finish it without problems. I’ve done so for years now. But I confess that I miss days at times. I try to read ahead when I can, and I play catch up when necessary. Bible reading has become a regular part of my life. But I avoid the term “daily” because I suspect that all of us who develop the habit of Bible reading slip up. I don’t want to set perfection as the standard for the person who has not yet developed the habit.

The beginning of the year is important to me as the time to set my goal for Bible reading in the next year. Starting the habit of Bible reading doesn’t require the beginning of a new year. The habit can be started at any time. But I have found that a new year has been a helpful time to start. The new year can provide motivation to form a new habit.

I have failed in my reading goals in the past, although I currently have years of consistency behind me. I suspect most people who successfully form the habit of being a regular Bible reader have had some failures along the way. Forming habits is not always easy. Life has many distractions. Research indicates that it takes a couple of months to form a habit. But we have to be careful to be consistent or we can unlearn a habit. Don’t let past failures stop you from trying. This habit is worth it.

For me forming the habit of regular Bible reading did not start with a daily Bible reading guide. I started smaller. I started with smaller goals with the commitment to try to read daily. (Note the word “try.” I tried for consistency not perfection. Forgiveness allows us to keep trying.) For example, I started first with the commitment to read the gospels. After I reached that goal, I made the commitment to read the rest of the New Testament. It is good to read through the historical portions of the Old Testament (Genesis through Esther). A simple reading log can track your progress.

The Bible reading guides that I have liked the most through the years have provided some variety in reading. I’ve done better with reading guides that gave at least an Old Testament and a New Testament reading each day. The guide that I have used the most through the years is the M’Cheyenne guide. It gives four different readings each day. Variety is helpful. It’s tough to plod through Leviticus or the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles. Having other passages to read really helps, because it ensures some spiritual nourishment in your reading. (Not that there are not lessons in Leviticus and the genealogies of 1 Chronicles. They just may be harder to recognize for the beginning reader.)

Bible reading is not just about reading. It is good to write down questions of things you don’t understand. In time, your reading may help you answer those questions. I’ve just had one answered that I have pondered for about forty years. Most questions probably won’t take that long to be answered. The most important things in scripture will be clear. Yet there is always something to be pondered. A quotation that goes back at least fourteen centuries suggests that the Bible is like a river “shallow enough for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough for the elephant to swim.”

A few simples tools can help. A Bible dictionary is helpful for looking up words that you don’t know the meaning of, and a map is helpful for locating places. These simple tools can enrich your reading experience.

It is also important to reflect on how this applies to me. Bible reading is about a transformational relationship with God. It has changed me as a person. It is not just about the head but the whole inner person. “… man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 8:3, NIV).

The Bible reader must be careful. The message must be properly understood and not distorted.

Sometimes passages do need further enlightenment that will change our perspective. This may come from taking into account all that scripture says on a subject, allowing scripture to interpret scripture. It may arise from new insights gained from history, customs, geography, understanding literary forms, or the biblical languages.

Yet, there is also the danger that we will fail to understand and apply simply because we don’t like what it says—our own willfulness gets in the way. Maybe scripture challenges our beliefs and attitudes, and we shrink away. Søren Kierkegaard told a challenging little parable of $100,000:

Suppose that it was said in the New Testament—we can surely suppose it—that it is God’s will that every man should have 100,000 dollars: Do you think there would be any question of a commentary? Or would not everyone rather say, “It’s easy enough to understand, there’s no need of a commentary, let us for heaven’s sake keep clear of commentaries—they could perhaps make it doubtful whether it is really as it is written. (And with their help we even run the risk that it may become doubtful.) But we prefer it to be as it stands written there, so away will all commentaries!”

But what is found in the New Testament (about the narrow way, dying to the world, and so on) is not at all more difficult to understand than this matter of the 100,000 dollars. The difficulty lies elsewhere, in that it does not please us—and so we must have commentaries and professors and commentaries: for it is not a case of “risking” that it may become doubtful to us, for we really wish it to be doubtful, and we have a tiny hope that the commentaries may make it so.

Let us be careful readers and students of the Bible searching for the truth (see Acts 17:11). Yet, let us not protect our hearts from scripture’s rigorous demands, but allow it to challenge and change us. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12, NASB).