Monday, August 2, 2010

The Bible in 90 Days Challenge - week 5

Bible in 90 Days Challenge, post regarding days 22-28.  Here's last week's check in.  Mondays are too crazy and I'll never check in if I wait until the kids are up and we get to listen.
  • Monday: Read Ruth and 1 Samuel 1-10.  The story of Hannah giving Samuel to the House of the Lord was being preached about one day about eleven years ago.  That sermon was the turning point for me in really owning the homeschooling decision that my husband had made.  Not that I can remember the details at all.  But the story of Hannah and Samuel always reminds me of that.
  • Tuesday: Read 1 Samuel 11-14, then we had to break for Connor to attend biology.  I went cruising around online, and John Rhys-Davies is voicing Saul.  Interesting to read what he had to say about it, and how voicing this part got him more excited about stories that he thought he already knew (or something like that... I closed the article and can't find it again!)  After biology we listened to 1 Samuel 15-20.  Then we had to watch Dave & the Giant Pickle.  The kids burst out laughing when Archibald (Saul) said, "Couldn't you just play your harp and I'll throw things at you?"  "I never got that before!!!" was what I was hearing from the kids.  Very funny.
  • Wednesday: Read 1 Samuel 21-2 Samuel 2.  Didn't take long for life with kings to get, um, interesting.  Swords, battles, attacks... kept the attention of my boys.
  • Thursday: Read 2 Samuel 3-15.  David sure made some mistakes in his parenting especially. 
  • Friday: Read 2 Samuel 16-24. The kids had a great discussion about what would have been different if the rest of the kings of Israel had been more like David.  Not perfect, but good.  Making mistakes all the time, but repenting and confessing when he realized it.  Not pointing fingers or making excuses.  It is kind of nice to realize that the kids do know their Bible well enough to know what is coming. 
  • Saturday:  Read 1 Kings 1-4.  Short day, but we had to.  It's interesting what the kids pick up on.  They heard the name Ben-Hur (we watched the movie a couple of weeks ago), and Richard caught Megido (something we saw recently on That the World May Know).
  • Sunday:  Read 1 Kings 5-7.  Very short day.  Kids didn't get home until pretty late, and Dale wanted to watch one of his birthday presents (Drive Thru History: East Meets West).  Anyway, I have to go find some pictures or something.  It is really hard to visualize when they are going through all the basins and pomegranates and cubits.
So, that's my check-in for the week.  We are almost exactly where we are supposed to be at 67 minutes per day.  We are "supposed to" be at 31 hours, 16 minutes.  We are actually at 31 hours, 20 minutes.  So I'm not beating myself up for doing two "short days" this weekend. Go here to see what others are saying.

So, in the check-in post, we were asked a couple of questions.

1.  Why did you decide to do this...?   Well, here, I think I decided to do the 90 day challenge because of a few things.  First, a couple friends whose lives are busier than mine are doing it, so I didn't feel I had an excuse.  Second, for the first time in a long time we had totally, hopelessly fallen off schedule in our usual read the Bible in a year plan.  Third, we had purchased this wonderful audio version of the Bible from Audible, and were only about 3 hours (of 97) into it... something that was really starting to bother me.  And finally, certainly not last, the morning the challenge started, I just felt a voice telling me that I could do this.  So here we are.

and why are you sticking to it?   We're sticking to it because, well, because we are supposed to.  And maybe for reasons in question 2.

2.  Have you seen any change in your life as a result of this commitment?  Well, yes and no.  We're certainly all viewing the Bible differently.  My kids have been through the entire Bible a few times before as well, but they are grasping things they never caught before too.  And I know it has to do with getting this big picture view, seeing the Bible as a story, something... instead of plodding along for weeks through lists and rules and tabernacle building.  Going through all of David's life in just a couple days this past week is a totally different perspective -- and that being the real Bible, not some abridged version, or top ten Bible stories countdown.

Bigger than that, maybe, is that we are roughly 1/3 of the way through a pretty big commitment.  We're going to spend over an hour a day listening to the Bible for 90 days... that does take some schedule adjustments.  And while it hasn't worked out to actually being 67 minutes per day, it has averaged that.  Sticking with this for almost a month now, wow... that's something to be proud of.

3 comments:

A Faithful Journey said...

Praying for you as you continue on in this journey!

Rachel said...

Stopping by on the blog walk. How great to read through the Bible in 90 days.

Amy@ MomsToolbox said...

I am so excited for you and your family for doing this together.
And I love that you are seeing it as story and getting a big picture view. :)
Thanks for joining our group in reading.. and for linking up & inspiring others! :)