Building a reading habit

Good intentions are easy to form and hard to keep. Most of us know this from experience: the gym membership, the language app, the notebook bought for a new project that still has only three pages filled. Reading the Bible is no different. Many people begin with enthusiasm and find that, a few weeks later, ordinary life has crowded it out. This final lesson is about the practical side of reading, the small and unglamorous habits that help it last.

I want to say at the start that a reading habit is not a test of how good a Christian you are. Nor is it a test of how serious a reader you are. Life has seasons. There are weeks with young children, long workdays, illness, travel or grief, when reading looks very different from how we imagined it. The aim is a steady return, again and again.

Start small and plan simply

The most common reason reading habits fail is that they begin too large. A plan to read the whole Bible in a year is a fine goal for some people, but for many it means three or four chapters a day. The first missed week can then feel like failure. It is usually wiser to begin with something you can actually sustain.

A few principles help:

• Choose a regular time and place. Early morning with a cup of tea, a lunch break, the quiet after the house has gone to bed. The same time each day makes reading easier to remember.
• Choose a manageable amount. A single psalm, a short section of a Gospel or ten to fifteen minutes is plenty to begin with.
• Choose a book, not a random page. Reading through a Gospel such as Mark, from beginning to end, lets you follow the story and see how each passage connects.
• Keep going when you miss a day. Pick up where you left off, without trying to catch up all at once.

To help with this, the course has a free companion: Bible 101: A Thirty-Day Reading Plan. It takes you through one passage a day, from Genesis to Revelation, each with a line of context and a single question to reflect on. If you miss a day, simply continue from where you stopped. The plan is a guide, not a timetable you have to keep.

Keep simple notes

Writing as you read slows you down in the best way. It also gives you something to look back on. You do not need a special journal; an ordinary notebook will do. After reading, you might jot down:

• the passage you read and the date;
• one thing you noticed or understood;
• one question you still have;
• one way the passage might shape your day (or a short prayer in response).

Over a few weeks, these notes begin to show patterns. You may notice the same questions returning or the same themes speaking to you in different passages. Questions you wrote down in week one are sometimes answered by a reading in week four. And on the days when reading feels dry, the notes are a reminder that it has not always been so.

Read with others

The Bible was largely written to communities and was, for most of history, heard aloud in company. Many of the letters in the New Testament were read to whole congregations. We can recover something of that.

Reading with others can take many forms. It might be a church small group, a conversation with a friend over coffee, a family reading a short passage after dinner or two colleagues meeting once a fortnight to talk about a chapter they have both read. In each case, other people notice things you miss. They ask questions you had not thought of. They bring experience from different stages of life and, often, different traditions. They also help with the practical side: it is easier to keep a habit when someone else is expecting you.

The early believers in the town of Berea are described in Acts in a way I find encouraging: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11, KJV). Readiness of mind, daily searching and careful testing. It is a good description of a reading community and a good picture of what this course has tried to encourage.

Over these six lessons we have looked at why the Bible is worth reading slowly, how it is put together, how context changes what we hear, how its many books form one larger story and how its wisdom meets ordinary life. None of this needs to be mastered before you begin. Most of it is learned by doing, a little at a time, over years.

So choose your time, choose your passage and open the plan. Read slowly. Write a line or two. Tell someone what you are reading. And when you miss a day, as everyone does, come back the next.

Reflect

1. What time and place in your ordinary week could realistically become your reading time?
2. Who could you invite to read with you, even occasionally? What would make that easy for both of you?
3. Looking back over the six lessons, what is one idea you want to carry into your reading over the next thirty days?