At the beginning of each year, we often set new year resolution, only to sustain a few months and realize that we are losing steams as each day goes by. Do you have similar experience in your Bible reading plan? If so, you may find the following tools helpful.
First, I want to introduce a great audio Bible. This is one that I have been using for over an year now. I like it for a few reasons: 1. The quality of the recording is great. 2. The NLT version is easy to understand. 3. It comes with tools for kids that we can use as a family. 4. It takes less effort to listen to audio Bible than to read it on my own. 5. Audio Bible prevents me from skipping around, instead, I would literally touch on every verse, even on the text that I feel a bit long-winded.
The second set of tools are from the Bible Project. I have started using it for a few months now. This is how their annual Bible reading plan looks like: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tbp-wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/RS_Reading+Plan_2017_updated.pdf
As you can see, they have divided the whole Bible into 16 big blocks. I love this concept coz it allows readers to have the macroscopic view of the whole Bible. If you look over the right-hand side column, you will see most books have the corresponding video clips. There are two types of video clips: 1. The book overviews 2. The biblical themes. Both type of videos are very well made, about 8-10 minutes animated ones. It is like the commentary overview in a snapshot. I usually watch the video clips before I start and after I finish the books. You can browse their video series from this link https://thebibleproject.com/#all-videos
On top of the hard copy reading plan, you can also download an app that allows you to track your progress (key word = the Bible Project). Unlike the hard copy that start on Jan 1, you can signal the app any starting date and it will populate the annual reading schedule accordingly. Once you touch the passage title, it will bring you to the text or the corresponding video.
As you view the video clip, you would agree that there are lots of researches that go behind the scene. Because they have to fit the video in certain length, some good stuffs have to be cropped out. They have put those in Podcast instead (key word = the Bible Project). For example, the book of Luke has four hour-long Podcast sessions that include different topics. You can catch up this while driving and it will give you a fuller favor as you spend time to dig deeper in the text.
