Saturday, January 4, 2014

Welcome to this One Year Bible blog!

Greetings, and welcome to this (almost) forgotten corner of cyberspace!  If you have stumbled upon this blog, I am guessing that you are trying to read your Bible through in a year.  If you are, congratulations!  That's a worthy goal, to be sure.  In fact, that is the goal that I set for myself in 2010:  to read the Bible in a year, and to blog about my reading each day.  This blog is the result of that goal.

The Bible I used was the One Year Bible.  It comes already divided up into daily readings, and what's more, it has readings from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs each day, which I really liked.  You can get the hard back version like me, or you can read it online for free here.

If you are using this Bible to read, you are welcomed to check this blog whenever you want to see someone else's thoughts about what you are reading.  (To find the readings, click on 2010 in the blog archive on the right, and then select the month and day of the reading you just completed.)  Now, fair warning:  these posts are filled with my honest reactions, which are not always pretty and are often influenced by my own background and life circumstances.  I was a little worried at times that I was being too honest, but I also believe that the truth is strong, and that God can handle all of my questions and frustrations.  (For more about the philosophy behind this blog, read this and this.)

I'm not generally around any more, but I have it set up that whenever someone leaves me a comment, I will get an email notifying me.  If you do, I will be sure to respond, because one thing I've learned during my journeys through the Bible is that reading it all the way through can be a lonely endeavor.  Maybe not in January, when half the church is with you...but by the time October comes around, you will probably be on your own.  So if you ever want any encouragement or feel the need to discuss what a particular passage means to you (even if it is troubling or hard to understand), I will try my best to be available to be a "sounding board," if nothing else.  I certainly don't have all the answers; in fact, I probably don't even agree with some of the opinions I wrote on this blog!  It was written years ago, after all.  But I do know that the Bible was not meant to be read and interpreted in isolation, so if you want to talk through it with someone, you can reach me through the comments on any post.

Regardless, I wish you the best on your journey through the Bible, and I hope that the ultimate result of your reading is to grow in love both for God and for your fellow man!