Forty-Four Days

My friend Anna have I decided we want to read the whole Bible in 44 days. My mom, sister, two of my brothers, and one of my brothers friends are joining us. So, I thought I would put an invitation out there for anyone else who would be interested.

Some reasons we are doing this:

1. The main reason we are doing this is because its difficult to get a "big picture" perspective of Scripture when only reading one or two chapters a day. Scripture connects with itself all over the place. Chances are, however, if you start reading Genesis in January and don't get to Romans until September you won't remember the details in Genesis very well, much less see how portions in Genesis connect with Romans.

2. From beginning to end, the Bible is a story. A really important story. We would never read a classic by Dickens or the like by flipping to random chapters and reading portions when we feel like. The author wrote the story in a specific order for a reason, and we won't understand the story if we don't read it the way he intended. Obviously the Bible can be studied by books and it should be studied slowly and it detail. That's not a wrong approach, and often the content is so deep that we need to read a little at a time. However, we should aim to study the Bible in a variety of ways, and reading through it quickly - almost as though it was a chapter book - is a good way to study it. And I don't think we do that very often (actually, I have never done it).

It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. We'd only be reading about 15-20 pages a day (depending on your Bible). Anna and I have written a plan...we are going to read the Old Testament in the Tanakh order (the original order of the Old Testament, it's a little different from our modern Bible) and follow with the New Testament. We have each day planned so that we will be reading approximately the same amount every day.

Anyways, if you are interested, leave a comment and I will post the reading plan tonight. Anna and I are going to start tomorrow because that's when our Christmas break starts. You can start with us (who knows, myabe I will even make a group if there are enough of us so that we can stay accountable) or you can start on your own time. It's a big task...but think of how exciting it would be to read the whole Bible in such a short amount of time! What a privilege it is to have Scripture!