Take the Word Challenge!

A rare weekend post, but wanted to report on Bill Berger's latest challenge from the 4/30/06 All Saints sermon (our Seattle church that we check in on through the power of the Internet). I'm late in coming to this, since this is 5/6 and the sermon was on 4/30 but the upshot is essentially this: spend the next 6 weeks reading the Bible daily (or "experiencing" the Bible if "reading" is not your thing). 1 minute or several, hang out with the Source of all of God's message to us.

I'm a reader, a librarian, a lover of books, so this should be easy, right? I'm not so confident, although I know I can muster up the discipline if I have the right focus. My key obstacle will be in the form of "distraction"--all of the other things and I should/could be doing with my time. Don Miller has a wonderful quote about this in his book Blue Like Jazz: "I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God. (p. 13).

The other obstacle is indeed in this form of habit, the scholar's habit more specifically. This habit is closely linked to the identity mentioned in the paragraph above: I am a reader/librarian/lover of books. Not mutually exclusive from the "distraction" point, the scholar's habit and a case of adult onset ADD (as well as a not-yet-refined management of my holds at the library, so 8 books show up all at once) means that I am reading all sorts of books, maybe even about God and Jesus. All of these vy for any reading time that can be spent reading the Bible. It's a matter of priorities, discipline and right focus.

So, we'll see how I do, and the blog may well serve as my means of accountability. Today got off to a good start. The plan is to alternate reading in the Old Testament (which I've been reading somewhat regularly), and the New Testament, as well as a chapter of Proverbs each day as per the "Bill Berger 1 Chapter of Proverbs a Day" method. The summary: 1 Kings 16-18 (Elijah!), and Proverbs 1 (Knowledge vs. Wisdom--ouch!).