So, about 8-9 months ago, I signed up at a site called readthescriptures.com. The basic premise of the site is that you pick the book of scripture that you want to read (Book of Mormon, Old or New Testaments of the Bible, Doctrine and Covenants or Pearl of Great Price), and the reading schedule that you want (you can do either a chapter or a day, or you pick when you want to end and it will divide up the book into chunks so that you will end at the specified day)
Once you have picked your book and your reading schedule, it will send you a daily reading schedule to your email. Having read the Book of Mormon several times, I decided to go with the New Testament, and one chapter per day. So, every morning, I’d have an email with one chapter of the New Testament in my inbox.
It seemed like a pretty good system to get, but it never really worked out for me. Although I did finish the whole book (finishing 243 days later, on this past Tuesday), it kind of felt like just a chore to do every day, rather than getting any joy or pleasure or enlightenment out of it. It was more just like one thing to do to clean out the inbox, and I would often find myself skimming through the chapter, just to get it done.
So, I think that I will not be using this for any more books.
5 responses to “Reading the scriptures”
i finished the doctrine and covenants and was in bom and pogp when stuff interferred. i am zillions of days behind. i decided to quit, since i can never catch up.
i also had a hard time with that scripture email thing. i just could never read it very well on the computer. i just don’t have time. and i kept getting behind and that bothered me. i didn’t need constant email reminders telling me how behind i was. it made me feel worse.
Considering all the time and effort you must spend on triathlons and exercise logs and Every Whatever stuff, etc., etc., I had wondered if you ever put your time and unique skills into anything that really mattered–in the eternal scheme of things, that is. 😉 Glad to hear you have, even though it didn’t work out well.
As I was reading your Every Whatever blog the other day, I was actually thinking about an activity I remember doing in Young Women as a teen–a Book of Mormon Read-a-thon. If I remember right, we brought pillows and snacks and our Books of Mormon to the activity, and we couldn’t leave until–as a group–we had read the entire Book of Mormon. I’m proud to say I was, I think, one of only three people who stayed awake until it was done. It wasn’t as much of a “feast upon the word” thing as daily scripture study the way it’s probably supposed to be done, but it did give us a sense of accomplishment and a big picture of the Book of Mormon that you don’t get reading little chunks at a time.
So I was thinking, “How about an individual EFC(hapter) in the Book of Mormon in 24 hours?” I haven’t put any more thought into it, except to realize that it would be less of a challenge for a fast reader or someone who can speed read.
Harmony,
Thanks for the comment – an interesting idea. Using my powers for “good”?!???!? 🙂
Actually I was intrigued by your idea and will file it away.
One of the other things that we decided to do is that we ordered a set of scriptures for kid #1 and planning on giving it to her at age 8. This is probably very standard mormon-y stuff. But I thought that it would be a cool idea to read them before giving them to her, to pray and mark things / ideas / comments that I felt would be appropriate for her as she is growing up.
So we have a bit of time yet, but if it comes right down to the wire, as things are wont to do, we may have to pull one of those EFCs 🙂
I have a very similar story to Carolyn. I gave up.
-Braden-