90 Days through the Bible

Starting January 1 of this year, Collin and I embarked on the adventure of reading through the entire Bible in just 90 days.  It was no easy task.  It took a lot of dedication and required me to spend the kid's nap time everyday doing my Bible reading.  While it took some sacrifices in my day it was totally worth it and was an amazing experience. This was my first time to read through the entire Bible and I learned so many things from reading it through as the entire story of God.

Here are some of the main thing that stuck out to me...
*God is faithful!  It was absolutely amazing to see how time after time the people of God fall away and he always takes them back and never stops loving them.  And I'm certain that unconditional love carries over to us today
*There is so much more of an emphasis on our care for the widows and the poor than I had ever seen.  It was surprising to see how many times that was repeated throughout the entire Bible.
*The God of the Old Testament seems completely different than the God of the New Testament.  I'm not at all sure how to rectify that but I think in the end God sent his son, Jesus, as his exact representation so it should be our main goal in life to live as Jesus lived.
*It's so much different to read the Bible through as the narrative of God as opposed to God's book of rules.  The Bible is the story of God's people from the very beginning.  Over and over He chooses the people you wouldn't expect to carry out his plans.  He doesn't pick the perfect people.  He picks the screw up and the sinners.  He picks David who breaks like half of the 10 commandments in one sitting.  He picks an unmarried teenage girl to be the mother of our savior.  And he picks a terrorist to write over half of our New Testament.  What hope that gives us, as sinners, to contribute to his amazing story!
*Relationships are so very very important.  I think after reading this I believe that relationships are more important than doctrine.  I know some people would HIGHLY disagree with this but I stand firm by my belief in that.  The second greatest command Jesus gives is "Love your neighbor as yourself."  I think we so very often forget this.  The way Jesus lived and the example he set shows us that putting people first was a huge priority to him.  I think we often forget this and it shows in the way we treat each other.  How much better would our world be if we took Jesus words "Love your neighbor as yourself" seriously?

What an amazing experience this was.  I am so thankful that I stuck with it and finished then entire thing even when I got a couple days behind and had hours worth of reading to do to catch up.  I would highly recommend this reading plan to anyone.  Yes it was hard but I feel like it was easier than reading it through in a year.  When you do the year long reading you have to stick with it for 365 days where as this was only 90 days.  The light at the end of the tunnel was much closer doing it this way.

For those of you who are interested in the plan we used here it is.  We didn't use an official plan from anywhere.  Collin had the book The Books of the Bible and just divided the number of pages into 90 days worth of reading.  This book puts the books of the Bible in chronological order as opposed to standard canon order.  It also removes all the chapters, verses, and section titles.  It makes the bible read more like a complete story.  It ended up being about 20 pages a day with 12 extra pages to finish at the end. It took me about an hour a day to do the readings.  Towards the end the readings got a little shorter because the books were shorter which made the foot notes and title pages come more frequently.  It was a great way for us to read through the Bible and after finishing it I would definitely recommend it to others.