Fountain of Thoughts: Context, Context, Context

I recently posted a list of my goals for the year. Regrettably, I have only completed one of them to date. However, the result of that goal, that is, to read the Bible in three months, was, in my opinion, rather interesting. My main reason for conducting the experiment was because I had heard quite a bit about its benefits. I had heard, specifically, that 'it put the Bible in a whole new perspective.' After having completed the experiment for myself, I must beg to disagree in part with the review. I found, that instead of giving the 'Bible a whole new perspective' it rather put the Bible into perspective.

'Context, context, context' is an oft repeated refrain in my church and house, so, I've always known that the Bible was in context. Nevertheless, I don't believe I have ever seen it for myself so clearly. It is easy in most cases to see the context between individual verses. It is even sometimes easy to see the context between chapters. I have very rarely however been able to see the incredible context between whole books.

While my Bible is not in chronological order according to events per se, reading it in three months pictured the order of events almost as if I was seeing them happen. It was frankly quite fascinating. I was able to 'see' Isaiah prophesying at the same time as King Hezekiah was dealing with the multiple Assyrian invasions. Another thing I noticed was that the Books of Kings, dealt with both the rule of Israel, and the rule of Judah, while Chronicles dealt only with Judah. By reading the four books in a short period of time, I was able to see the correlations between them in context.

Another perhaps benefit I observed was the diminishing of the tediousness of certain sections. I.E., the genealogies and the temple measurements. While I probably like these sections more than the average reader, I still find them, like most people, to be tedious. I found this tediousness nearly if not completely eliminated by reading them in two, or at the most three days. I'm still not sure though, if this is a benefit, or just a general gratefulness for getting to read something else sooner.

I've always had a little bit of a difficult time understanding Paul's longer epistles. I now know why. Each of his chapter's builds upon the other so that it is nearly impossible to read one and understand it without reading the preceding chapters. This time around, I think I have finally discovered why most people love Paul's writings. He is very logical. I must confess however that while I really enjoyed Paul's letters, I still like the writings of John better, even though I found them particularly convicting this time.

When I finished my little experiment, I came to the conclusion that I should highly recommend it to others. It only takes fourteen chapters per day. I was able to do this from between thirty minutes and an hour. And this was yet another benefit: the spending of more time in the Word was really good for me. After you all try it, maybe we can get together and do the other experiment: having a read-aloud Bible marathon!

(This has been: Fountain of Thoughts. Look in next time to read: A Day in the Life of:__)