Happy New Year

Confession? I'm not much for New Year's Resolutions.

What with the holidays and the snow, I'm enjoying being home, cozy, and relaxed waaay too much to try to implement big changes. And, honestly, September feels a lot more like a new beginning.

But, having just finished (and enjoyed) three series of daily devotions with the boys - for All Saints Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas - I wanted to continue with something structured. (Something I will not be reporting on daily.) And I have a couple things in mind.

Have you ever read "Ten P's in a Pod"? The Arnold Pent family were not your typical neighbors. Traveling evangelists, who lived by faith, they put a high priority on God's Word.

How high?

Well, if I remember right, they all read the Bible individually for an hour before breakfast (starting at 15 minutes when they first learned to read, and working up to an hour), and then aloud together for half an hour after every meal. That's 2 1/2 hours. Every. Single. Day. Turns out they memorized huge portions... whole books. If you started a verse, one of them could finish it.

I was inspired.

And overwhelmed.

So we're not doing that. But I really liked the idea of reading after a meal. Food for the body, food for the soul.

Enter The One-Year Bible. For every day there is an OT reading, a NT reading, a Psalm, and a few verses from Proverbs. It goes through the whole Bible in a year, doing the Psalms and Proverbs twice. (It's been around awhile.)

So my grand idea is to do the OT reading (the longest one - maybe 10 minutes, reading aloud), after breakfast, the NT reading after lunch, and the Psalms/Proverbs after dinner. Together. Aloud. I'm sure we'll miss some, and get behind. But, really, it's do-able.

I debated doing the Chronological Bible (also in 365 readings) instead, because that appeals more to me, the linear, sequential type. But then again, we could easily get bogged down in the long sections on Jewish Law, genealogies, etc. I'm hoping that reading from different parts of the Bible during the same day will help keep the boys' interest up.

I'm really hoping that their minds will be saturated with God's Word. I know they aren't going to understand everything we read. Me neither. Good grief. It's like drinking from a fire hydrant!

So that's one idea.

Here's my other one, "Our 24 Family Ways". I've read a few of the Clarksons books and love the way they live out their faith as a family. I'm thinking of using this book as our family devotion time. 24 themes, 24 weeks, so it will about match up with the end of our school year... but not exactly. This is where we'll be doing more teaching, while the reading time will be mostly just ... reading.

So what are you doing for the New Year?