March (Bible-Reading) Madness

Commandments!! Lightning!! Golden Calves!! Quails!!

First, I have to say thank you all for the incredible response to my post a few days ago about The Quiet Hours project. It’s so encouraging to know I’m not the only person who has felt this way.

The longing to connect with Scripture—and with the centuries of believers who have gone before us—can feel so tangible I can almost touch it. And yet it’s often been hard to know what to actually do about it.

Before I go any further, I should say that while I do hope you’ll stick with me as we build this over the coming years, there are already many good resources out there. A few of them were mentioned in the comments.

Trevin Wax has a 30 Days series that’s truly wonderful, and he’s just announced a year-long project I’m really looking forward to that will release later this year. He’s been swimming in these waters for a long time and knows what he’s talking about. (That CSB translation I often recommend? He was the general editor.)

One of my first introductions to these rhythms was The Daily Liturgy podcast, produced by Coram Deo church in Omaha. It’s usually about a 15–18 minute listen each day, and it’s excellently done.

And speaking of excellently done… if you’ve been following along in my plan, you may have noticed we read the same passage in Exodus two days in a row recently. Whoops. (Told you this was a work in progress.)

I’ve continued refining and restructuring the plan and decided that the “Proverbs as spacers” idea was more confusing than helpful. Especially once I got into larger narrative sections and wanted to linger there a bit longer, it seemed more like it was getting in the way.

The ultimate goal, as you can probably see more clearly now, is for each month to fit within the broader Old Testament story while also forming its own kind of month-long arc. Eventually, each month will stand alone as its own little book within the series.

If someone six years from now picks up the August volume, I’d love for it to feel like a compelling narrative in its own right. How can it serve as a meaningful introduction to Scripture for someone new, and also as a deep dive for someone who’s heard these stories their whole life? How can it hold a beginning, middle, and end — while still living inside the greater arc of the Old Testament?

I’m treating the New Testament the same way.

The real aim (bonus points) is for each month’s Old and New Testament readings to resonate together thematically. Ideally, the journey you’re on in the Old Testament will be mirrored, deepened, or answered by the themes in the New Testament readings.

Which brings us to this month.

Because of the ongoing retooling, we’re skipping ahead a couple of days in Exodus. Feel free to go back and read what we’re jumping over if you’d like. My apologies.

In the New Testament, we’re going to spend the month in Romans. I love that we’re taking the whole 31 days with this 16 chapter book, because it’s so theologically dense. You just can’t read it the same way you read long Old Testament narratives. This doesn’t read like a novel. Better to take a smaller section and sit with it each day. Chew on it a bit.

And I really love how much resonance there is between the Old and New Testament readings this month. Thematically, this pairing is powerful.

Both are really about liberation and law.

In the Old Testament, we’ll spend the month wandering in the in-between. God’s people are freed from Egypt, but now what? They complain. God meets their need. They forget. They complain again. The cycle goes on and on until… well… I guess it’s still going on, isn’t it?

As we read we’ll receive the law in the form of the Ten Commandments. This is where we are first told to care for the vulnerable and to love our neighbor as ourselves. To love God above all. And yet we also get the Golden Calf. We’ll watch Moses see the Promised Land but never enter it. He wanders the desert for forty years and dies as our month comes to a close. Some of the most iconic passages in all of Scripture are here. Phrases so embedded in our culture that you might not even realize they come from the Bible.

(Let’s remember, too, that everyone we read about lived in the Middle East or North Africas. These were not freshly showered tall white guys like the Sunday School pictures or the cartoon above.)

(They probably didn’t play basketball, either, but sometimes AI is worth the eventual robot takeover.)

And then in Romans, we’re also talking about the law, but from the other side of the cross. Paul teaches how the death and resurrection of Jesus have set us free from the bondage of sin and the fall. This is some of the deepest theological work in the entire Bible. It’s going to be a rich pairing. (At least, I hope so.)

I’m excited!

Thank you again for your excitement around this project and for reading through the Bible with me this year. If you’ve missed a couple of days, now’s a great time to jump back in. I won’t judge you. I can’t! I’ve missed a couple days too, and I’m the guy who made the plan.

After all, the goal isn’t perfection. It’s to keep moving forward. To grow with the Lord. Maybe if doing it together even in some tiny way through a community like this can be helpful for you, that would be so sweet.

Hopefully, down the line, we’ll find deeper ways to connect around it. But that’s for another time. For now, here’s the plan for March. Off to the desert we go!!

Hope you’re all having a wonderful weekend.