Bible Reading for Slackers (Part 1)

Read Deuteronomy 6




January 1st: Resolved to read through the Bible in a year. To pick a program and simply stick with it.

I know I’ve tried this before and failed (the lure of winning that Sunday School Certificate just wasn’t compelling enough), but this time I am really going to do it. Sheer will power will take me there. No excuses. It doesn’t matter that I work, have children, am sick, travel, celebrate holidays, or am just a lazy slob, this year I WILL do it.



I skip the plan that suggests you read straight through the boring. And the one that has you read twenty verses from five different books every day (too annoying). I go for the historical one. It looks interesting. This one has you read the Bible chronologically and you get to see the flow of Biblical history. I like the idea. You start with Genesis and end with Revelations, but, for example, when you get to the life of Moses you get to throw in the Psalms he wrote and hear his poetry through his troubles and triumphs. And when you get to the kings of Israel you get to read what the prophets were saying while their kingdoms crashed. This desire is more than just wanting to congratulate myself on having done a good thing.



Reading through the entire Bible would keep me from going the same old route which takes me to familiar places. Like Luke when I want to be jazzed by Jesus’ life. To the Psalms when I am depressed and doubting. I avoid Ecclesiastes; it is very dark. I am not fond of Leviticus either, too many sacrifices. And the minor prophets do rant so. However, I want to hear God’s voice in all its ways during all the times he spoke to and through men. I want to know Him. I want to know the hard parts where babies’ heads are dashed against stones. And I want to know why we must endure page after page of numbers and names of people we know nothing about.



I have read and I respect men like John Stott who say,

Christians who neglect the Bible simply do not mature. When Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy to the      effect that human beings do not live by bread only but by God’s Word, he was asserting that the Word of God is just as necessary for spiritual health as food is for bodily health. I am not now thinking of remote Christian tribes people into whose language the Bible has not yet been translated, nor of illiterate people... I am thinking rather about ourselves. Our problem is not that the Bible is unavailable to us, but that we do not take advantage of its availability. We need to read and meditate on it daily, to study it in a fellowship group and to hear it expounded during Sunday Worship. Otherwise we shall not grow. Growth into maturity in Christ depends upon a close acquaintance with, and a believing response to, the Bible.

[Source: God’s Book For God’s People, John Stott, IVP p. 76]



So, even though I am tired from celebrating until midnight on the 31st of December, I prop myself up in bed. Denis brings me a cup of tea and I plunge in, reading Genesis 1-4. Creation accomplished! It feels so good to check off the square.

Part one of a three part drop from Bible Reading for Slackers and Shirkers by Margie Haack. Come back tomorrow to follow Margie as she valiantly endeavors to accomplish her resolution. Margie with her husband Denis are co-directors of Ransom Fellowship, a ministry helping Christians engage in postmodern culture in ways that are both authentic to the Christian faith and winsome in expression. She blogs at toadsdrinkcoffee.blogspot.com. 

The Source of LIFE

Read John 1


From Just Give me Jesus by Anne Graham Lotz



It can be mind boggling to contemplate the vastness of the universe, from the greatest star to the smallest particle. It is so vast that astronomers are now saying that it stretches beyond what we are capable of measuring, even with sophisticated telescopes like the Hubble. And every bit of it was created by the Living Word of God, Who, even as He hung the stars in space, counted them and called them each by name!



Not only did He create objects of massive size, but He also created such minute, delicate, intricate things as snowflakes, no two of which are the same. He created:

atoms and angels and ants,

crocodiles and chiggers and clouds,

elephants and eagles and electrons,

orchids and onions and octopuses,

frogs and feathers and sea foam,

diamonds and dust and dinosaurs,

raindrops and sweat drops,

dewdrops and blood drops,

and me! And you!



The greatness of His power to create and design and form and mold and make and build and arrange defies the limits of our imagination. And since He created everything, there is nothing beyond His power to fix or mend of heal or restore.



Years ago, a man was driving his car down the road when the engine coughed and wheezed and sputtered before stalling. Try as he might, the driver could not restart the engine. Finally, he stood glaring at it, and, in frustration, kicked the tire. Just then, a long, sleek, polished black limousine pulled up beside him. The chauffeur hastily jumped out and opened the back door from which stepped and elegantly dressed gentleman. The gentleman asked the driver what the problem seemed to be. The exasperated man replied he had no idea; the car had just quit running. The gentleman asked to have a look for himself under the hood of the car. The man scoffed at the idea of such a finely dressed man having any knowledge of the mechanics of a car’s engine, but the gentleman persisted in his offer. Since no one else had stopped to help, the driver skeptically accepted the assistance and threw open the hood.

The gentleman leaned over the engine, twisted a few wires, tapped a few cables, and tightened a few plugs. Then he told the driver to try to start the car once again. This time, the engine responded immediately.



As he closed the hood of the car, the driver turned to the gentleman and thanked him profusely. Then he inquired, “By they way, what is your name?”



The gentleman replied simply, “Henry Ford.”



Henry Ford had made the car, so he knew exactly what was wrong with the car and how to fix it! Jesus Christ is the One by Whom, for Whom, through Whom everything was made. Therefore He knows what’s wrong in your life and how to fix it.



Is your heart broken? Does your life need mending? Who or what do you know that needs “fixing?” Jesus, as Creator of life, knows how to make it work. Let him take charge. Give Him the authority to put it right. Having brought everything into existence that exists, He has never become bored with or distracted from or unconcerned about His creation. The Living [Word] personally hovers over all He has created, giving it His full attention.

Dreaming

Read Psalm 37

Long ago, little girls were very good at pretend. Plastic dolls and dress-up clothes and microphone spoons were their props as they rocked and twirled and sang, dreaming of what was to come. Time marched on, and the little girls grew. The props fell away and new ones took over–diapers and blankets and pacifiers, only the babies weren’t plastic this time.


The mommy-girls smiled as their babies grew, and one day they noticed their little baby-girls rocking and twirling and singing, practicing their future. And the mommies remembered their own dreams. Some smiled at the power of a dream, recognizing their former toys as their current tools, and whispered, “Dream on, sweet child.” Other mommies suddenly remembered a tucked away dream and dusted it off with excitement. But some mommies barely breathed, surprised that forgotten dreams now remembered hovered with the scent of unrealized longing.

Seeing the Fog Lift

Read Psalm 121


This morning I have a cold. The fog is rolling over the hills and just now at noonish the sun is just hardly coming through the mist. I've had the regular morning of pulling two toddlers out of a billion different disasters and instructing older children in chores and homework. It's emotionally exhausting.

My second born son was going through the typical second born syndrome of saying life isn't fair and how come the first born gets to do things he doesn't do and how come life is just generally unfair. . . Robert very graciously took him to work with him today.


Not sure that is a second born syndrome after all. But maybe a human syndrome.

Presents/Presence

Read James 1:19-27


You can't fool them, you know.

Two pudgy hands cup left cheek and right, turn your face to demand your eyes laser lock onto hers, and she whisper-stomps "Mama, you're not listening...!"


Technically, you’re right when you coo, “Yes I am, honey, I can just do two things at once,” because you did hear her; but she’s right because you weren’t listening.

Silent Night

The phrase repeats itself over and over again in his mind:


Silent night, holy night,
Stille nacht, heilige nacht.




Father Joseph Mohr, Parish Priest

It's the first line from a poem this young Austrian priest had written two years before. Now he can't get the phrase out of his mind. "Silent night, holy night."

The Christmas Guest (Saturday Special)

It happened one day near December's end

Two neighbors called on an old friend

And they found his shop so meager and lame

Made gay with a thousand bows of green

Merry Christmas!

 ^1-5About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for. So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David's town, for the census. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant.

Light of the Whole World: The Shepherds' Story

Posted by Andrea from The Jesus Story Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones

Read Luke 2

God was like a new daddy--he couldn't keep the good news to himself. He'd been waiting all these long years for this moment, and now he wanted to tell everyone.

...Now he was going to send a big choir of angels to sing his happy song to the world: He's here! He's come! Go and see him. My little boy.

Now where would you send your splendid choir? To a big concert hall maybe? Or a palace perhaps?

God sent his to a little hillside, outside a little town, in the middle of the night. He sent all those angels to sing to a raggedy bunch of shepherds watching their sheep outside Bethlehem.

...God must have thought the shepherds were very important indeed, because they were the ones he chose to share the good news with first.

The Gold and Ivory Tablecloth

Read Matthew 1:17-24






by Howard C. Schade
Reader's Digest Article, 1954



At Christmas time men and women everywhere gather in their churches to wonder anew at the greatest miracle the world has ever known. But the story I like best to recall was not a miracle -- not exactly.





It happened to a pastor who was very young. His church was very old. Once, long ago, it had flourished. Famous men had preached from its pulpit, prayed before its altar. Rich and poor alike had worshipped there and built it beautifully. Now the good days had passed from the section of town where it stood. But the pastor and his young wife believed in their run-down church. They felt that with paint, hammer, and faith they could get it in shape. Together they went to work.