Today is Wednesday, September 21st, 2005; Karen's Korner #638

At a Bible study that I was attending last spring, my friend Judy made the statement that she had heard a speaker mention on television the day before "that Americans watch an average of 70 hours of television in two weeks time; and that it would take the average American 70 hours to read the entire Bible through."
 
I thought, "I don't think a person could read the Bible that fast."
 
Not only did I think it, I said it in the class.
 
So I decided to challenge myself to see if it was possible. Beginning the first part of June, I would read 1/2 hour two times a day weekdays; only one 1/2 hour time period on weekends (and several times I would miss or skip!). I didn't study what I was reading. I read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus like a novel. I didn't read the Bible from front to back, but rather one book at a time, skipping around from John to Joshua; from Psalms to Hebrews. And I finished up the 66 books sometime in August.
 
Guess what? I am not the fastest reader in the world and I finished in about 61 hours! (Don't ask me what is in chapter 2 of Lamentations, because I probably don't know; and like a novel, when I got lists of names of people I couldn't pronounce out loud or in my head.......I sort of skimmed through it, going for the next part of the story).
 
Now that I have tested my theory, I divided the number of hours I read by the number of days in a year. An average reader like me could read the entire Bible each year by simply reading 10 minutes a day.
 
If you have 10 minutes every day, I would encourage you to find one of those listings of "how to read the Bible in a year". I have seen them here and there over the years and thought, "I could never do that!"
 
I was wrong. I could do that, if I just started. And the second thing, I think would be not to let a whole bunch of days pile up to "get back to it".
 
Not many people have hours and hours a day to catch up.
 
But the fun part is: it is do-able!

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