reading 66 books in 90 days

In case you might thinking that all I read was Dr. Seuss, or didn't get any sleep for three months, let me clarify: I read the Bible in 90 days. As a catchy song taught me when I was a little girl: "Sixty-six books in the whole Bible, each one a special part! Now we'll learn this song and it won't take long till you know them all by heart, all sixty-six books by heart." Ironically, that's the only part of the song I remember. I had already learned to recite the books using a different song. (ah lyrical education. You can poke fun but it really works! Ask me and I'll spout out the titles of all 66 books in less than 60 seconds.)

Of course, along with knowing the titles of the books and the stories therein, my family also read through it all together at various intervals. We followed a few "Read The Bible In A Year" plans. This included the tediousness of Numbers, every impressive but repetitious genealogy, every story of lust or murder that could get a little uncomfortable in general, let alone with kids of varying ages. We read through them all, taking turns reading aloud. I have to say: it was a really great thing. It was reverent, it was family time, it was educational, and many parts are of course quite entertaining. Remember being a child and imagining Jonah being swallowed by a fish, or a donkey that starts talking to her master? Story-time and history lesson all in one.

So earlier this year I decided to read the Bible in 90 days. As part of a discipleship group I'm in I had the option of picking how I would study or be in the Word for the next few weeks. Reading the Bible in 90 days was one option. I decided to go for it. I divided the number of pages in my Bible by 90 and settled on 10 pages a day. That number was actually a little more than needed, but I wanted to start out ahead in case I fell behind.

Genesis was great. All the stories I grew up hearing that were so familiar but even more incredible (as in seemingly impossible so that I felt incredulity) when read as an adult. I'm not even talking about things like Noah's ark or the Lot's-wife-pillar-of-salt episode. I'm talking about things such as how Abraham tried to pass off his beautiful wife as his sister, twice. Did he not learn that it didn't go well the first time? Also the instance where Jacob's two wives bargain for each other using vegetables as to who gets to sleep with their husband that night, and apparently Jacob mildly goes with the flow without raising an eyebrow. The poor guy didn't want two wives in the first place, and ended up working 14 years (14 years!) for Rachel, the wife he loved. On top of that his two wives are sisters, and though I don't live in Bible times that just seems awkward.

Even through Leviticus and Numbers it was pretty smooth sailing. Then I got to Psalms. I love the Psalms, but for whatever reason, I became bogged down. They are beautiful, but similar. I got lost in a forest of praises and laments. I read one or five but usually not the full ten pages I needed to read. Finally I realized that I had gotten really behind, so I made a plan to catch up. I blocked off more than an hour a night to sit and read. I flashed through Proverbs and the rest of the books between that and Job. Job is a little harder. There's a lot of talking, and it's pretty hard to keep Job's friends straight, because they are all pretty vocal about how they each think they're right. However I did catch a few unusual gems I had never noticed before: the book of Job references both dragons and unicorns. Suddenly I'm thinking that these mythical creatures may not have always been so mythical after all ...

I made it through the Old Testament and jumped into the New Testament. The home stretch. It's really interesting to read through each of the gospels, one right after another. Luke has always been my favorite because of his account of the nativity story and all the parables he includes. As I read through Acts, I found myself appreciating his attention to detail and his attention to other people. It makes sense: he's a physician after all.

When I got to Revelation I read through it in one sitting. Upon finishing, I stared at the closed book, awash in it's varying contents. Overall, it's definitely how I would recommend reading the Bible at least once, but not all the time. Normally I prefer to linger over certain pages and delve deeper into some chapters, but that's difficult to do when one is in a time crunch. However at the end I felt a deeper appreciation for how all the books flowed together to create the most magnificent volume ever given to man. I had a full scope of the whole thing: in 90 days I had read straight through it, laying it out in my mind like a timeline, like the geneologies that are recorded in careful detail. Parts are beautiful, strange, violent, sad and poetic. Some passages I read through that are familiar as my siblings names, some were a surprise to revisit and recall. 66 books in 90 days? So, so worth it.