Last year, I challenged my jurisdiction to try The Bible Challenge, a course for reading the Scriptures in one year. A number of people did so, including myself, and now we have some new folks trying their hand at it, as well as a few who want to do it all over again.

As for me, with a ridiculous travel schedule especially last year, I found it difficult to stick to the daily readings, dipping back in when I caught my breath. I have started again this year, thinking ahead to my sabbatical in May, to complete in full the Bible Challenge.

The brainchild of a talented priest in the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the Rev. Marek Zabriskie, the challenge is simple. Read 3 chapters of the Old Testament, one Psalm, and one chapter of the New Testament, all in course, every day except Sundays for a year. There is no ideology other than the notion that reading the Scriptures is good for you. The Center for Biblical Studies offers several ancillary resources, and indeed, I had the honor to be asked to contribute a little myself.

The other discovery I made last year was that I now find it very difficult to “just” read the Bible. I have been preaching the lectionary for thirty years now, and I have become accustomed to preparing sermons on the lections for Sunday, as well as following the Daily Office. The result is that I had lost to a certain degree the integrity of the text as a whole. You can read Genesis in one fell swoop — I did, many times, before ordination. But if you haven’t done it for a long time, and you are a professional preacher, you get tripped up. At least I did, noticing things I had never seen before or had forgotten, being led off into comparisons of texts (dig out the Synopsis), looking up the Hebrew or Greek, and essentially being very distracted.

But in a good way. Now that the shock of recognition has worn off, I think I can proceed to read all the Bible in a year.

And then, just like for the Chicago Cubs, there ‘s always next year...