Do you read the Bible?

Let me put that another way. Do you – not as part of a Bible study group, not in church when the pastor tells you to, not just occasionally when “you need comfort” – actually crack open your Bible on a daily basis?

If you said No, I wouldn’t hold it against you. I’m certainly not the one to cast the first stone here, because I’ve ONLY JUST managed to establish a genuine Bible-reading habit, and it’s taken me years. I do own one of those chronological “daily Bibles”, and that was pretty useful when I was a new Christian and actually needed to read the instruction manual. I managed to get through my daily readings two years in a row, although sometimes I got behind and would have to do catch-up sessions. Sometimes, particularly in Chronicles and Numbers, my reading was more like skimming. Actually, even in some of the more readable bits I was often skimming, as if the Bible were a school textbook I’d been assigned to read and just had to plough through.

Having accumulated a certain glow of pride (not for nothing is that the deadliest of all sins!) in having read the Book from lid to lid, I then entered a period of Bible Avoidance. It came handily disguised as “Staying in the Word” which is a lovely vague term Christians use to mean all sorts of things: daily devotionals which reference Bible verses (I didn’t read those, thought I probably knew them, you know how it is); lectionary emails that would pile up in my inbox till I got round to reading, ahem, skimming them; Bible podcasts for the car (which I then proceeded to tune out, especially during Chronicles – I definitely have a problem with Chronicles) and so on.

Then God started to do that nagging thing He does – you know when you get EXACTLY the same message in every blog post you read, sermon you hear, conversation you have with a friend? Well, having heard 3,000 variants of “you need to crack open the Book” I finally gave in, pulled my nice zippered study Bible off the shelf (during the Bible Avoidance period I managed to purchase three, because I am a victim of Avoidance-Accumulation Syndrome)* and opened it up to the Book of Mark.

Well, I’m still in Mark, so this habit really is very, very new. While I’m on this confession jag, I will also admit to a new glow of pride about my Personal Bible Study, which probably negates its effects on my soul by about, ooh, 75%. I need to pray about that. But let’s not get started about my abysmal prayer life – yet.

The one big thing I’ve learned is not to hurry. I linger, I re-read, I think, I question. After all, I’m never supposed to get to the end of this Book. My name is Jane, and I hope I’m going to become a Bible addict.

[Note: Tonja kindly invited me to contribute to this blog some months ago. It took me a while to feel ready to begin. I accepted Christ as my savior about ten years ago at the age of forty, having imperiled my soul on a regular basis for many years before that. I have a long way to go, and I invite you to share my journey.]

I intend to end each post with a question for Tonja, and today’s is: how would you suggest a person start reading the Bible?

*A serious condition characterized by the acquisition of books/projects that you have no time to read/do. More prevelant in the female of the species.

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