Fancy a challenge, or rather fancy joining me in a challenge I'm setting myself.
Could you spend 40 days this Lent in one passage of the Bible?
Don't get me wrong, I know I'll read plenty more of the Bible, the Old Testament and New Testament, and I'll undoubtedly preach about other bits of the Bible, you might do too, but still...
What might happen to you, to me, if each day in Lent I came back to the passage from Joel we read on Ash Wednesday.
It's a funny, three-chaptered book in the middle of the minor prophets. I'm not confident he gets much of a look in throughout the other 51 weeks in the year, but every Ash Wednesday the Anglican church includes Joel 2:1-2,12-17 in its main service. I mean we don't even include the whole chapter, just a few select verses.
You can read them here, or the whole chapter here.
So that's eight verses in total.
Eight verses from one chapter from one of the 39 books of the Old Testament, which itself is out of 66 books in the entire Bible.
I hear lots of people say that Lent isn't about giving stuff up (despite the ubiquity of the question: what are you giving up this Lent?). Instead, people tell me that Lent is about taking up practices, behaviours, habits and hobbies that will help their walk with God.
One of these disciplines is reading the Bible. There's this consensus among Christians I meet that they want to use Lent to 'read my Bible more.' This often leads to ungovernable reading plans, early alarm roll calls, and urgently downloaded Apps. And so many people plunge themselves into a swimming pool of guilt as they struggle to keep up with the volume of Bible they attempt to ingest.
What I'm suggesting is eight verses. Eight verses you might read every morning. You could read that as your coffee brews, or your washing bowl fills, or as you brush your teeth. How long does it take you to read eight verses? Doesn't sound like much, does it?
You could read the verses and then have a read of this blog (if you want?). I'll try to blog each day on a new aspect of Joel I'm noticing.
Fancy it?
I do. It's both a serious challenge, but also a playful one.
And I hope that might characterise your Lent: serious and playful.
And for a moment more, use your imagination, how might you feel, think, act if you were to commit to this challenge? What might happen to me in the rising to the challenge?
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