Bible Reading Strategies

As promised, here are some links that might help you get a handle on reading the Bible. I've placed a link of this info on our church website but I'll recap it here.


A cycle of daily readings from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs that takes you through the entire Bible in a year can be found here. This week's readings are here. You can also purchase a One Year Bible in your favorite translation, with the daily readings arranged by date.

The prayer readings of Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours we used to begin the conversation yesterday can be found here. They consist of prayers for morning, noon, and evening. Corinne Ware's Saint Benedict on the Freeway: A Rule of Life for the 21st Century offers another take on the concept of praying at specific times throughout the day. Another resource for this kind of prayer throughout the day that involves a focus on scripture is A Contemporary Celtic Prayer Book by William John Fitzgerald.

The Upper Room produces print and online devotional resources you might also like to use. These are typically daily devotions surrounding a weekly theme. The format highlights a particular verse, offers an accompanying reflection and then closes with a short prayer. The advantage to using this resource is that it makes devotional time highly accessible and focused. Each devotion for the day is also short - you can typically read the offering for the day in five minutes or less. Here also is the disadvantage - there is a temptation to breeze through the meditation and ignore an invitation from the Spirit for further reflection and engagement.

Another daily/weekly devotional guide I have used in the past is A Guide to prayer for All God's People, compiled by Rueben Job and Norman Shawchuck. The Guide uses scripture readings that follow the Revised Common Lectionary, and adds prayers and readings from other devotional authors. This type of devotional activity involves more time and reflection than a typical daily devotional guide with a verse and reflections. It also presents a highly structured form of devotional reading and prayer. The devotional readings collection includes a variety of ancient and contemporary theologians and mystics whose wisdom and passion for God compliments the readings for the week and for the day. Each week is organized around a common theme.

This year, I have also been using a devotional guide by Trevor Hudson and Morton Kelsey titled Journey of the Spirit: Meditations for the Spiritual Seeker. The guide includes a weekly meditation, short quote, prayer and journal suggestion on a theme covering an aspect of the Christian life, plus daily readings of verses of scripture pertaining to the theme. These daily scripture verses are short and lend themselves to memorization (so that you can carry them with you throughout the day) and contemplation. Hudson, in particular, advocates a "less is more" philosophy about Bible study and contemplation, advocating spending more time with shorter, more manageable verses in scripture. 

Vicki and I typically put the sermon notes online Thursday or Friday before the Sunday we will preach the text. You can find these online sermon notes (that we print in the weekly bulletin) here. These sermon notes compliment the sermon (also available online) so that you can use the weekly scripture and theme as a regular devotional that you can meditate on throughout the week and engage more fully with the "take" or reading presented by the pastor during the sermon on the weekend.


I'll be sharing more print and online resources, and look forward to hearing about the resources that help you read and experience the scriptures. Please feel free to share them as a response to this entry.