My great-grandfather, Reverend A.F. Whitlock, a retired Baptist minister, would dress in a white shirt and tie well into his nineties. “I never know when I may be needed, he would say. Great-Grandad loved the Bible. “As many times as I’ve read it,” he said to me more than once, “I always find something new God has for me.”
Hidden in those words lies the reason some people keep reading the Bible, and others don’t.
The easy part is finding plans for reading the Bible. A variety of those are available on your laptop or smartphone. And it’s still early enough in the new year to start, so that finishing a read-through of the Bible plan in a year is possible.
You can find plans for reading through the Bible thematically, with topics like mercy, redemption, and covenant as they develop through the pages of the Bible; other plans integrate Old Testament passages with Wisdom Literature and the New Testament so that you can read chapters from more than one section at a time; you can access how by spiritual leaders of long ago, like Robert Murray McCheyne, had their own unique plans for reading through the Bible; perhaps the simplest plan is to start in Genesis and read 3.25 chapters a day, on average, through Revelation.
There are Bibles designed explicitly for daily readings that take one through the Bible in a year. These Bibles offer the same variety as the downloaded plans.
For those who don’t like the pace of a one-year plan, there are two and three-year plans.
So, finding a reading plan is not the problem for reading through the Bible in a one, two, or three-year period.
Motivation is key, especially when reading through genealogical records (looking for baby names?) and the dietary laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy (ugh). It is easy to get bogged down in historical details that seem far removed from the current events readily accessible in small portions on Instagram, X, or Facebook. We are used to small bits of information.
And that could be one key to staying with it: take Bible readings in bites rather than gulps. As the saying goes: “By the yard it’s hard; by the inch it’s a cinch.” So, perhaps a chapter in the morning, another at noon, a third in the afternoon, and another at bedtime will work, although picking up the Bible more than once a day does take discipline. But we do that with our cell phones dozens of times a day, don’t we?
So, again, the issue is motivation.
That brings me back to my great-grandfather. “As many times as I’ve read it, I always find something new that God has for me.”
I feel sure Great-Grandad read through the entire Bible several times during his 103 years. Apparently, he read the Bible expecting to hear from God. As the famous preacher F.B. Meyer said, “We should read the Bible as those who listen to the very speech of God.”
Reading the Bible then becomes not so much a project we do as a process we live, because it’s much more than checking the daily Scriptures off a “to-do” list. Meditating on what we’ve read often leads us to internalize it.
I’ve read through several Bibles over the years, each with markings alongside specific passages, signifying personal trials and triumphs along my journey.
As a child, I heard Great-Grandad say that he wished he had memorized more Scripture, so I’ve tried to memorize portions of the Bible over the years, thanks to his admonition.
C.S. Lewis once compared Christianity to a map. We are each on a journey. We encounter different landscapes, valleys, and mountains along the way. But it helps to know where we are going rather than mindlessly wandering. As Lewis put it, “If you want to go anywhere, a map is necessary.”
This year, try picking up the map; you will be sure to find something new along your journey that God wants to show you.