Local Minister Proposes Reading Less Scripture In 2024
Vol. 2 Is. 1 || The First Post of a New Year
I’m glad to be publishing my first newsletter of 2024. I’m glad to be writing again. As you’ll read in the post below, I’m going to take myself less seriously this year. If I don’t publish something every week, so be it. I won’t feel the need to explain why it’s been 3 months or however long since I last sent out something and how I’ll be better. I don’t know that I really have any Substack goals this year other than to write enough to start finding my writing voice. I don’t think I’ve found that yet because of how seriously I’ve been taking myself and overthinking, therefore writing very little. No more! So that’s what this year will be about, starting with this post. It reads a little bit more like a journaling prompt than an essay, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s the voice I need to go for. Who knows! Happy New Year.
I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but if I had one this year it would be to take myself less seriously. Especially with my writing. Such a resolution would manifest itself in a couple ways. Here’s the first: write better headlines, even if they sound like clickbait. Have more fun. Second, I’ll no longer feel the need to justify not publishing something every week. I do plan on being consistent again, but part of not taking it so seriously would be acknowledging that sometimes I just won’t have anything worth saying. Instead, I’ll see where the year takes us.
Since I have your attention with clickbait and talk of New Year’s resolutions, here’s a disclaimer: I would never tell you to stop reading scripture.
I had a lot of good ideas and plans to “be a writer” last year. As it turns out, I hardly fulfilled any of that. I suppose something is better than nothing, but I fell well short of what I originally outlined. Upon reviewing my plans, a friend gave this counsel: “This is good but it really sounds like a lot. Don’t know how you’re gonna do all this.” Should’ve listened.
Nonetheless, God uses all sorts of things to teach His servants. He’s used things I did write, as well as things I thought about but didn’t publish, to teach me about my limits. I think I was on the right track in several areas, but I need to take more of my own advice. In one post, I mentioned the idea of constructing a “to cut” list before constructing a “to do list.” My to cut list last year was a pretty good one. There were things that needed to go, even though they were “good” things.
I replaced or rearranged more than I actually cut. I may have cut something with good intention only to replace it with something else days or weeks later, thereby only adding to my mental noise and clutter. I rarely get sick enough to miss anything, but late last year I had something that knocked me down a couple days. As I tried to rest, I couldn’t even shut off my brain long enough to take a nap. My mind wouldn’t stop racing, and that’s when I knew I had to REALLY cut out some inputs. Perhaps you’re wondering what this has to do with reading less scripture in 2024…
I’ve been thinking for a little while that my “quiet time,” specifically my daily prayer time, had become a little mid. I couldn’t explain why, but it just felt a little off. Though I read a lot of scripture, I pondered little. On top of that, my prayer time was mainly consisted of asking God for things. Good things, but still just making requests. Even my list of prayer requests was hard to run through due to the aforementioned struggle to quiet my mind.
Why, though? I considered the possibility that I was doing the quiet time thing all wrong.
Perhaps I needed to base my prayer time on smaller chunks of scripture instead of reading large portions of scripture only to tack on my requests at the end just to say I prayed.
I needed to learn to pray prayers from Church history that are hundreds or thousands of years old and allow them to be a springboard to my own prayers. I needed guided prayers that would teach me to pray for more than my selfish list of requests when I didn’t know what to pray.
Enter the book of common prayer/daily office, which I wrote about last year. When I first discovered the BCP and Daily Office last year around Lent and Easter, I tried to follow the plan while also following the other reading plans I liked. I did all that in an effort to immerse myself in scripture, which is good, but I didn’t leave myself any space for prayer and meditation. This only resulted in discouragement because I can’t do all that. Eventually, you fall behind.
I resolved to make 2024 the year of establishing a daily pattern for prayer, scripture intake, and meditation…
Then I convinced myself I would do that at the same I tried to complete the 30 day shred in January! The Shred is a plan designed to give you the full overview of scripture in 30 days. It’s the exact opposite of slow, deliberate, prayer and meditation on scripture. The goal is to quickly follow the big picture of the Bible in a month so you never lose sight of it. Considering the depth of meaning in Leviticus everyday would be difficult, but it’s also good to not forget that it IS there for a reason. Read the whole thing in 30 days and take the rest of the year to go as slowly and deeply as the Holy Spirit leads.
This is a noble goal, unless you’re under strong conviction that you really need to slow down. Which I am. That’s the point of this post. It’s the lesson I’ve both learned and am actively learning.
Limits. Staying focused on my convictions.
On New Year’s Day, I made it to Genesis 10 before I thought better of trying to do it all. How could I do both without being discouraged when I couldn’t sustain the pace? I couldn’t, so I made the spiritually responsible decision to stay focused on what I needed to do rather than allow myself to be distracted by a good thing.
So, in a way, I am advocating for “less” Bible reading this year. But not just less… BETTER. Quality over quantity. Much less box checking. More prayer and more meditation on the applications of what I’ve read.
So, what about you? Do you need to evaluate your Bible reading for 2024?
Well , I’ll say it was good click bait ! I have decided to put off reading/ listening to Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxes to read through the entire Bible this year. I’ve seen The Bible Recap - may need to look into this further and I’m intrigued but I’m going for the whole cover to cover following a plan ….