How Much Time?

How much time do you spend reading the Bible?

For pretty much the past year, when I first decided – before I became a Christian – that I needed to read the Gospels to learn more about Christians’ relationship with God, I’ve been spending about 2 hours/day reading and studying the Bible. It’s a huge part of my life.

You’d think I would have gotten through more of the Bible than I have in that time. But I guess for me, “reading” includes reading a passage, going back and re-reading other passages that it brings to mind, praying about what I’m reading, comparing the same passage in different versions of the Bible (my favorites to compare: ESV, NIV, King James), looking up the footnotes, meditating on the passage, and sometimes (though definitely not always) Googling what others have said about that passage, which sometimes leads me to some interesting articles about the passage, sometimes (though not always) looking for and sometimes watching recorded sermons that Pastors from my church have given on that Bible passage in the past, etc.

I’m getting the impression that spending this amount of time with the Bible might be a little out of the ordinary. On my “bad days” this makes me feel self-conscious or doubt my own sanity (“Is there something wrong with me, that I spend so much time reading the Bible?”)

On the good days – when I’m feeling really connected with God – I have no such doubts, and love the time I spend with His Word.

I read an article that said if you spend 12 minutes/day reading the Bible you could read the whole Bible in a year. I spend way more time than that & haven’t read anywhere near the whole Bible in the past year. (Self-Doubt: “Am I doing it wrong?”)

And then there’s the part of me that wonders why I even care about stuff like this.

I do feel like the Bible is a big part of my life and I kind of miss having others with whom I can talk about the Bible as much as I’d like.