The Bible in a year project

As many of you will be aware, last year I undertook probably one of the biggest challenges I had ever faced. Bible in a year. While this is not necessarily a particularly daunting task for me personally just in terms of length of it (I've been known to read 500 page books in the space of a few days if I get into them, so reading a 1300 page book over the course of a year was not even remotely out of the question), the question was more whether I could develop the habits necessary to actually read a little bit each day, and much to my surprise, I succeeded!

As December 31st - and the end of BOIY - approached however, I had to ask myself a question. What do I do now? Bible in a year has been one of the best things I ever did, but if at the end of it I just stopped, then what would really be the point? That was when I had an idea. During 2018, whenever I was reading my bible in a year for the day, if ever I came across a verse that jumped out at me, for any reason, I would highlight it yellow. My thinking was essentially that if I ever went back over it, I'd be able to see exactly what verses had been significant to me at that point of my life. What if, from January 1st 2019, I started again from day one, doing exactly the same thing as before, but this time, I used a different colour. It was at this point that everything began to fall into place.

You see, the thing about the bible is that it's a book (albeit in this case God's book), and like any book, how you see it and what you get from reading it will change depending on where you're at in life, and how you read it, that's why it's important to approach reading the bible prayerfully, asking God to show you what he wants you to see from any particular passage (something I have really not been that great at if I'm honest, but when I do I almost always get more out of it than I would otherwise). What this means though is that no two readings of a passage will ever be quite the same, and so the significant things will change, and by using a different colour I can track this somewhat.

In addition to all this, I've been looking for something of an excuse to resurrect this blog, and so, without further ado, I present to you, the bible in a year project!

Essentially, every time I'm reading my passage for the day, and I come across something I have highlighted, it goes into a blog post, and I will (hopefully) do a little bit of commentary on what it meant to me then, and what it means now. These will probably not all be in separate posts, since there are rather a lot of highlighted verses, and so I will probably end up grouping them together somewhat, but I thought it might be a fun idea to share with you all the things that have inspired me over the past year.

Slight disclaimer to close though, since I didn't actually have a physical copy of the bible in one year until ~day 40 anything I post until then will be stuff I've found significant now rather than stuff I found significant last year. Don't worry though, because I've got a whole bunch of ideas for stuff to do to fill the gap, so all you avid readers of my blog can be on the look out for that!

I will leave you with a passage from day 8, Matthew 6 (one of my favourite chapters) Verses 6-8, which I have been really encouraged by:

6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.