Our church recently put a very helpful post up on their website encouraging us to read the Bible this year and giving us some practical guidelines and plans for doing so, at various levels of intensity (you should go check it out if you are in need of a Bible reading plan - they have a lot of good ideas over there). One in particular stood out to me because it seemed a little different from any other reading plan I've seen in the past and because it claimed to be a way to "master" the Bible - which is a rather extravagant claim, I would think! Basically, the idea is to choose one book of the Bible at a time and read it all in one sitting, continuing to do so until you've read the book twenty times. I think of a book like Genesis and I quail at the thought of reading it in one sitting... but the purpose is to grasp the primary messages and principles of each book as a whole, instead of getting lost in the details and the depth and never coming to a full, complete, and coherent understanding of the whole book.
So I thought, well, there's really no loss in trying this even if it doesn't turn out to be that doable, and I'm starting with the smaller books and working my way up to the more intimidating and lengthy ones. 2 John, at only 13 verses, took the prize for first, so I've been reading it repetitively for the past few days (I'm at 15 times through right now). And I do feel like I'm finally beginning to understand the point of the book. Each time I read through it, it's like I'm putting a piece into a puzzle, and the themes begin to emerge from the text, becoming clearer and more beautiful as I go. Maybe I'll write about it when I've made it through all twenty reads :) I'm finding treasures in that little book that I never knew were there, which really encourages me to do my best to follow through with the rest of this crazy plan to read the Bible! The beauty of the wisdom of God's word is breathtaking.
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