Bible in 87 Days!

~erica

One of my personal goals this summer was to again read the Bible straight through. I started June 16 and finished September 10- 87 days later. Ryan was a little concerned that I started as we left on vacation but I wanted to be done before I started back to school. Let me tell you, it was easier to keep on track on the go than it was on the days we were home. I loaded the Bible on my phone using my Kindle app- I found it last year as a free book, its English Standard Version. I always had it in my pocket- we had a few minutes waiting for something I could read, I could read in the car, I could read in line, any few quiet minutes I could read a few verses. I didn't need to be online to read since it was a Kindle book. At home it was harder to get to- I found myself going to do it "later."

I got really bogged down by the poetry- Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, I think the despair behind the writing was more apparent, because I had just read the history, the feelings and the circumstances really stood out to me. Job also was really hard to read- he lost all his children and that really hit me this reading, I've found myself bargaining with God "You've got two, leave the rest with me." and He really wants me to trust Him with all of them. Nathan is preparing to return to the sandbox this winter in a much more dangerous job description in a more volatile area than the last time.

On a less heavy note- I enjoyed reading the Old Testament history in the ESV but in the New Testament some wordings struck me as cumbersome or just wrong. I don't have specific examples but several times I was unsettled by how the passages were interpreted. I'll be looking for another version to load onto my phone...

 

Now I am ready to tackle my program at Evergreen and the 250-300 pages per week of reading that is required. In the past 4 weeks I've already read the first 3 required books, I've finished 2 this week since I finished reading the Bible. Today is the first day of 4 days of mandatory orientation...