Spiritual Maintenance Check - 10%

On Saturday on my other blog, I wrote about hitting the 100k mile mark in my MINI.  I then proceeded to perform some maintenance on the MINI.  Those maintenance items - flushing brake fluid, rotating tires, etc. - are things that are done on a periodic basis, usually once a certain number of miles are reached or a certain amount of time has passed.

As I mentioned in my last post here, for the new year I was starting a new reading plan which, if I make it through it, will result in me reading 3660 chapters of the Bible in 2012.  It has occurred to me that reading the Bible on a daily basis is like maintenance for my soul (or maybe spirit is more accurate as Pastor Mark and I discussed in Sunday School one morning - but that is another story).  But maintaining my soul is a little bit different in that it is not something that I can attend to every once in a while.  Even a little bit, like once a week, may be beneficial, but quite probably not sufficient to keep things really running well.  So in the case of my Bible reading, as our Lord's Prayer alludes to, I need to have some "bread" on a daily basis.

As I noted when I first started Horner's plan, reading on a daily basis was not going to be stretch for me as I was already reading almost daily.  Where it would stretch me though was in reading so many chapters and in reading from so many different parts of the Bible on a regular basis.  Reading ten chapters a day (or night in my case as I like to close out the day with my Bible reading - really the only time the house quiets down) has resulted in me spending more actual time in the Bible.  In my past reading plans, a lot of times it was only three or four chapters and I could oftentimes get through it in 20 minutes or so.  Reading the ten chapters is really keeping me in the Bible for a good hour now.

As far as reading from so many different books, I'm still getting used to that.  Every now and then I'm seeing connections/parallels.  Alas, I really need to start keeping a journal at hand as I read and jot down notes.  I figure I'll get to that shortly now that I'm starting to get used to the whole system.

Finally, this post is written mainly as a checkpoint as I have passed through the 10% mark today.  Yes, I've made it through 370 chapters already (10% was really at the 366 chapter mark).  Thus far I have read the following books in their entirety since January 1st:

• Matthew


• Romans


• I Corinthians


• I Thessalonians


• II Thessalonians


• I Timothy


• II Timothy


• Titus


• Philemon


• James


• I Peter


• II Peter


• Proverbs


• Joshua


• Acts

For both Proverbs and Acts, since they are the only books in their respective list, I have started reading through them for the second time.

So, off to a good start with the plan.