The Bible in 1 Year

Well, I did it. Last night I put the finishing touches on my quest to read through the Bible in 2007. It really helped to clear my reading list and to just focus on reading the Bible. I have a few comments/reflections on my journey these past six months.

• Reading through it has left me amazed at the breadth and scope of this amazing piece of writing. I really believe that if you took an infinite number of interpreters/commentators and gave them an infinite amount of time with the Bible, they still would not be able to uncover all that is contained within the text. The Bible really mirrors God in this way.
  

• I am convinced more than ever that the Bible should not be read alone. At the very least, you need to look at books that interpret the Bible to at least have some other voices to offer insight. I think it is a wonderful idea to read the Bible in a group setting, particularly in a diverse group. We really must assume a posture of humility when approaching the Bible.

• The thing that stuck out to me the most in this reading was the marriage metaphor between God and God's people. Perhaps this is because I ended with the OT prophets and Revelation, but it just seemed like over and over again this metaphor kept popping up. Along the same lines, "prostitute" was a common term used describe the people of God in their relationship to God.
  

Even though I have completed reading the Bible, it is not as if I will put it back on the shelf to collect dust. The Bible is not really a book in this sense - where you only read it once because that is all you need to read it. I would now like to focus on studying specific parts of the Bible. I think I may start with Jonah. When reading it through, I was really surprised by its brevity. It is only 4 short chapters long. I think in my mind it was always this huge epic story that was presented to me in Sunday School as a young kid, so I just assumed it was longer than it was. But, even though it is short, I really think that there is a lot there.

Looking forward to continuing to wrestle with the Good Book.