The Bible in a Year – It's finished

“He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” Thus ends the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. After reading this sentence, with an extravagant gesture I turned the page, thus concluding the project of reading the Bible in one year.

Our church began this project on January 15, 2009, and we concluded it on January 14, 2010. In one year, we have traveled through the Bible, starting with the New Testament and then moving on to the Old Testament. No doubt some stragglers will continue to cross the finish line for another week or even a month, but what a joy to conclude this project! And along the way, some lessons learned:

• For many, it was a first and a true revelation to read entire books of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Our charismatic evangelical culture has accustomed us to reading small snippets of passages and verses that we cheerfully mix and match to support our favorite theories, while completely neglecting the context and prevailing circumstances. It is obvious that meditating on a single verse of Jeremiah is much more digestible than consuming chapter after chapter of dark prophecies of judgment, but choosing the latter is choosing truth over ease and fleeting emotion.
• The theology is simple but not simplistic; there are complex issues that need to be addressed, and in some cases we are, like Ezekiel, obliged to simply say, 'Lord God, You know.'
• The Bible is rich and varied. This kind of project requires you to read everything, to dust off books that would otherwise remain ignored for years. Indeed, how many times a year do you look at Micah, Nahum, or Amos? From time to time, it's good to look elsewhere than at Ephesians and the Gospel of John.
• A hard truth to swallow, we realized that in reality we read the Bible very little, at least much less than we imagined. This project only requires a few chapters a day, yet many have struggled to keep up. Often we live under the illusion of being avid readers because we have been in the Christian world for years and we know the stories and jargon by heart.
• It's mind-blowing that God would go to the trouble of telling us all this, and having it told to us. What awe and reverence for a God who provides us with such an abundance of material to work with, to meditate on, to use as the basis and substance of our relationship with Him. It's yet another palpable demonstration of God's love for His people.

And now that that's done, this year will be devoted to an exhaustive study of the New Testament.

Shalom.