Four Chapters a Day

Last New Year's Day I challenged you to take up the New Year's resolution to read four chapters of the Bible per day. I did this with you and finished back in October sometime. I will be starting this again on New Year's Day and invite you join me again.

But this year, I am not so much inviting you make a resolution to read four chapters of the Bible per day as I am inviting you to make a resolution to read the Bible on an ongoing basis. If you read with me last year, then you might feel a sense of achievement. We earned the Four Chapters a Day badge. Done. Check that off the list. What I'm proposing is that you make reading the Bible an everyday thing. We've proved that you can easily finish the Bible in a year of reading with time to spare, but then what? Keep reading the Bible.

I have done this several years in a row. It works for me to finish in October, get busy during Thanksgiving and Advent, and then use New Year's as a springboard to start over. For you, it might work better to read one chapter per day. A friend of mine read the Bible in 90 days once. There are many different tables of reading on the Internet. Don't worry about the metrics. The point is to make scripture a constant companion in your life.

I'm restarting my four chapters a day on New Year's Day. If you wish to join me, the way is easy:

• Pick a time of day that you can regularly get away from the rest of life to read.

• Pick a comfortable place where you can regularly read. (Where I read, I become the comfortable place and my cat takes over my lap.)

• Pick your favorite Bible. It's best to think in terms of "most readable," which may be different from your "most sentimental" (the Bible your mom gave you might be unwieldy, for instance).

• Read four chapters a day. This year, when I get to the very long Psalm 119, I'm just going to treat every stanza as a chapter.

• Give yourself grace if you have to skip a day or don't finish. When this happens to me, I try to read five chapters until I catch up, but it's also OK to just not catch up as long as you keep reading the Bible on an ongoing basis.

• If you like, let me know you're doing this so that we can support each other through the year.

Finally, there are some hard things in the Bible. Whatever schedule you follow -- or even if you don't follow a schedule at all and just stumble across some hard texts in the Bible -- if you want to talk about it, call or email and we'll talk about it together.

I hope that your 2026 is a blessed one and that in reading the Bible and in everything you do you feel the presence of God, Emmanuel, with us.

Blessings,

--Chas