Our world is a very crazy place.  And getting crazier.  Everywhere we go, we're bombarded by advertising and other messages.  We're told we have to work longer, harder, faster if we want to "get ahead".  And we listen - pulling all-nighters and pushing ourselves to the point of exhaustion.  At least I do that... I hope that not all of you do!  Since Christmas Eve, I've put over 1200 miles on my car... and most of that was "vacation" time and I never left Ohio!  And yet the Bible tells us to listen to the "still small voice" of God, the gentle whisper that makes it's way through the chaos.  It's hard to remember to listen sometimes.  I decided a while back that the answer to making sure I was getting my time with God everyday was to absolutely refuse to go to bed until I had gotten into the Word.  And that has worked pretty well.  Even though it's often 2 or 3 AM before I open the Bible.  Even though that pushes bedtime back even a little farther than it already was.  It's absolutely worth it to stop, reflect on the day, take a deep breath, and get serious with God for a while.  I sleep better for that.

This year I decided to do something different.  Folks on a few of the blogs I read were talking about reading the Bible through in a year.  Now I had done the follow the reading plan in the back of the (insert trendy teen study Bible here) and read the Bible in a year thing in high school, and honestly, it didn't do much for me.  I've found an awful lot of relevence for my life by leaving my daily readings up to forces beyond me.  But this year, I wanted a little more discipline to it, so I decided to check it out.

I've been following the year-long plan over on youversion.com.  It's not like the plan from that old teen study Bible.  It takes you through the whole Old Testement and the New Testement twice over the course of the year, and you read from several different books each day.  I have to say, it's been really refreshing.  It's only been 8 days, but I think this was a great idea, at least for this season in my life.

Which reminds me - there are still 357 days left in 2009, so it's definitely not too late to play a little catch up and join me... think about it.  It's a great deep breath each day.

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