1. How has your bible reading been going?
I haven’t found it difficult to keep going, even when away on holiday, but I recognise that as a retired person my situation isn’t typical of the rest of the group.
2. Which readings have you found particularly useful/difficult?
I find Carson particularly helpful in suggesting ways in which what I read in Scripture can relate to our contemporary life. Otherwise I would, I’m sure, tend to immerse myself in the linguistic and anthropological background to the text. Important though scholarship is, it isn’t the same as “listening for God”.
3. Do you have any advice or encouragement for others in the B2Y group?
The most important question. My advice would be to maintain the discipline of daily reading. Even if you can only manage a couple of minutes, do it prayerfully. There are so many ways nowadays to make it easy: small format bibles you can slip into your pocket, mp3 audio readings and, of course, any amount of help as well as the biblical text itself on the web and therefore accessible from your iPhone/Touch/Pad. Few people can (or should) be too busy to manage any of these things. On holiday in Marseille I noticed the attendant in the left luggage room had a Bible open on his desk. Clearly, he was “redeeming the time” (Ephesians 5.16, Colossians, 4.5). In the midst of stress, frustration and annoyance even the act of opening the Book and starting to read is making space for God to calm us down and put us right.
I look forward to reading the experience of others.
Malcolm
A small administrative note relating to those of you who subscribe:
I often publish THEN edit a post once I’ve seen how it looks. This is not the best practice, but it’s slightly more convenient.
However, it meant that people who subscribed via email received the original post, and not the updated/edited one (which is live on the blog).
I’ve now changed the subscription settings from “immediate” to “daily” so subscribers will now sometimes have a day’s delay, but at least you’ll be getting the post without the errors… I believe that I’ve changed that setting for everyone, but it might have actually just been my own subscriber settings. If any subscribers could comment on that, it would be handy!
It’s mostly visual things like corrected formatting, or clarifying language…and removing the occasional heretical teaching
actually, I think it’s my own subscription I changed, not everyone’s…
Oh well, I’ll just have to be more careful about getting it right first time!