As the RBC Bible reading plan comes to a close after 10-weeks in the Old Testament, it's clear to me, more than ever, that we need to be planners when it comes to bible reading. Adhoc, ill-disciplined, random reading is sure to yield little growth.
What I'm so enthused about is that even young children have taken up the plan and found a scaffold for their reading patterns during the last ten weeks. Not everything will have been understood, not everything will have gone in deep, but we simply must have bible in our lives and they got that for ten weeks.
One of the little ones told me that the thought of reading Exodus for example was simply too big for them, but by taking the plan chapters, that gave them part of the bigger story. It helped them not to be daunted but to be able to see how that book might fit into the big picture, because of the chapters they had read. How I hope that one day those chapters will lead them to read the whole of Exodus!
Someone else described their experience of the sixty old-testament chapters as 'a pathway to Christ'. Amazing! Think of how that confirms Jesus' words, that these are the scriptures that speak of him. From the seed that would crush Satan's head in Genesis 3, to the blood on the doorposts of Exodus 12, to the anointing of David in 1 Samuel 16, to the glorious promises of the new covenant in Jeremiah 33, to the Sun of Righteousness in Malachi 4, the chapters gush with Jesus.
So, my prayer is that this is just the beginning and that we can, as a church, commit to another 10-week reading plan in the new year and see more of Jesus in the pages of his revelation. We cannot survive without it, and a plan will be that scaffold for us that helps us to see as we should.
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