Becoming

 It looks like I missed the opportunity to notice that I started this blog attempt one year ago. And what a weird year it's been.

Have you ever had a skill that you're really good at, but you hate doing it? That's a major plot point for one of the characters in the movie Center Stage. She's really really good at ballet but she doesn't really like it. I don't know how common that situation is, but I do know it's very common to really enjoy doing something while actually having no real skill in that thing. So when you find a thing that you really enjoy doing and you're also freaky good at it, to me that's a Gift.

When I've recognized that I have a Gift, my goal is to find a way to express my faith with that Gift. To give it back to my God in some way. To worship Him with my Gift.

One of my Gifts is reading.

It's kind of a weird thing. How does one worship via reading?

When I was a child, there were some books that I read over and over and over again to the point that I could practically recite them. Even if it's been several years since I've read The Chronicles of Narnia, for example, I can still recall certain passages at random. Something will happen in my life and it will remind me of Narnia and I can name the book and narrow down the chapter and often find that I've remembered word for word exactly what's there.

So it occurred to me that it would be the ultimate act of worship to become that familiar with the Bible. Not to memorize bits and pieces out of context, but to really know the whole thing so well that it becomes a part of me the way so many works of fiction are a part of me. And the only way I know how to accomplish that is to read it over and over and over again.

This wasn't the entire reason for the little bit of insanity I'm about to type up, but it was always a part of it. This desire to know the Word of God intimately, to use the Gift He gave me to glorify Him.

The way it went down was that we had a really horrible holiday season, and at some point in that mess, I thought to myself "my life was way better when I read the Bible every day". And I remembered that I had a "read the Bible in a year" Bible on my bookshelf. So I picked that up and started reading daily. It's in the New King James translation but I always forget that, I keep thinking it's something else.

A couple weeks later I remembered that I'd been meaning to look into the Chronological Bible. It turns out this is also available in a "read the Bible in a year" format. So I went ahead and bought one, it's in the NIV translation. And this is where the perfectionism comes in. Both of these books try to convince the reader that you can read the Bible in a year in only 15 minutes per day. And I'm a fast reader. So let's say it takes me 10 minutes to read each one. That's only 20 minutes. Who doesn't have 20 minutes for Jesus?

So I read both of them that year. It was intense. and kind of amazing. Also kind of crazy.

The next year I decided I would read the Chronological Bible again and just add in a little devotional thought from another book I have. I really enjoy the chronological approach. It just makes so much sense to me.

Later that fall, I was introduced to a Bible reading plan that has a strong emphasis on actually applying the Bible to how I live my life. It's also arranged to allow readers to choose a "snack", "meal", or "feast". That is, to read a small portion of Bible every day, a larger portion, or to read enough each day that you can read the whole Bible in year. Guess how I did with that?

Since I already knew I could read the whole Bible twice simultaneously in a year...

I knew that I could take the application tool and use it with the chronological reading I was already doing, but part of the plan is to be reading in the same sections as the other people who are following the reading plan and apparently I have some serious FOMO. (fear of missing out) I did that reading in the NIV as well. 

It was working out for a while because the tricky parts that are harder to read weren't hitting me at the same time in both formats. And then the next fall, I decided if I'm going to read the whole Bible once or twice every year for the rest of my life, I should check out more translations. Just for funsies. I like to read the same thing in different ways, I learn all kinds of cool things that way. I researched different translations and thought about what I'd like to read and made a plan. And then my wallet disagreed with my plans. I ended up in Walmart, which has really limited options. I came home with a really pretty purple fake leather King James translation.

I really enjoy reading from the King James. It's so dramatic. It's also easy to see the many places that people have gotten hung up and misunderstood what the Bible is trying to tell us. That spring I was also in a Bible study that was written in way that didn't make sense unless you were using the same translation as the author. So I'd grabbed a copy of the English Standard Version.

Then life happened and I had an opportunity to let go of more perfectionism. I didn't finish reading King James. I probably got through a good two thirds of it. Then it was fall and time to start the reading plan over again and I picked up the ESV. At some point, I also lost track of the Chronological reading. I'm currently one reading of the book of Revelations away from having read that 3 times total over what's now been almost 5 years.

The whole reason I started typing this is that today I finished reading the ESV And this fall, I'm going to begin reading The Message. I think this translation could be really fascinating. I'm also debating getting back into the chronological reading. I'm not going to lie, a couple months ago I did the math to find out if I could finish my 3rd chronological reading and do a 4th reading before 2020 is over. It could have been done. Probably still could be. 

But the point isn't to just read the Bible as much as possible just to say that I did it. The point is to make the Word a part of me. To allow it to change me. To let it be an act of worship. A Gift to my God.

It's a joy to me, to read the Word in any translation, in any format, in 15 minutes a day or binge-reading all day long. I'm looking forward to another year of reading, of practical application, of worshiping with everything in me.