New Year's Resolution

In recent years I have not really made any New Year’s Resolutions, however I do reflect upon things within my life that I may want to change or improve.  I do set out things for myself that I think I need to work on, but I don’t know if it really constitutes a “resolution” or not.  I just think that this seems to be an obvious time for reflection, but the things which I think I need to work on or be more proactive about are things that I should always be doing or have thought about doing just hadn’t gotten around to or the like.  So, in affect this is similar to a resolution – I just don’t necessarily title it as such.

            Part of my personal reflection for this year came from a discussion with a friend regarding reading the Bible.  I have tried in the past to read the Bible.  I have tried different approaches to this.  I started once with the New Testament and didn’t even get through an entire Book.  I’ve started with the Old Testament at one time and I think that I made it all the way through Genesis, or at least close.  I’ve thought about skipping around and tried reading through Psalms. I’ve always ended up getting overwhelmed, became uninterested, gotten wrapped up in a daily hectic life, or whatnot. There has always been some reason to stop. 

I’ve had multiple discussions with a friend that had made it her goal last year to read the entire Bible in one year.  She researched it online and found a plan that she liked for reading through the Bible in the course of a year. She accomplished her goal and finished reading the Bible (chronologically) in a year’s time.  There are multiple sites online devoted to this.  You can choose the version of the Bible that you want to use, you can choose whether you want to read from beginning to end, chronological order, etc…  These plans break up the Bible into sections that are not terribly overwhelming to read on a daily basis, which to me should be helpful in making it through.

So, I have chosen to try reading the Bible in a year.  I chose a plan using the version I am used to and receive daily emails with the selection as well as being able to go onto the site itself to get the reading (or of course in a Bible). I do not tend to like reading text online.  However, along with reading online or via email I also have the option to print the selection.  I am hoping that this will work out for me, especially considering the fact that there will likely be times that I am away from home, potentially for a week at a time or longer, but I should have my laptop with me whenever I am gone somewhere and it is usually fairly easy to get internet access for long enough to at least load the selection and put it into a word document to read from.  So, we’ll see how it goes.  I started a day late because I didn’t sign up for the email notifications, etc… until about 8 p.m. (Alaskan time) on January 1, 2010.  This meant that I the “program” which is set up on a calendar on the site with my login info began from January 2, 2010.  Unfortunately, I’m already a bit behind.  I did the reading for January 2 on time and then didn’t do the reading for the 3^rd until today (January 4).  However, I have saved what I need to read so that I can get to it and double up on one day (hopefully tomorrow).  At this point I’ve also been taking my time going through and I’m even keeping a little journal and writing notations to myself along the way.  I’m not so concerned if I don’t get it done in exactly a year, but if I can keep focus and work through it in sections and not fall too far off the schedule.  I’m hoping this might be helpful to me also for the fact that I do not have a church available that I can attend on a regular basis here.  I have attended a Lutheran Church in Sitka and will probably attend there again if I’m in town on a Sunday, but normally I’m on my own.  So, I guess I’ll see how this goes!