Ministers Desk 7th October

This week has marked the first week of our Live Light in 25 words campaign.  Live Light is a campaign that encourages us all to develop or maintain a discipline of daily bible readings.  There are people in our congregation who have for many years read their bible daily.  In doing this they have been blessed by God with peace and certainty.  They have been given guidance in how to live and have allowed the reality of God’s kingdom to grow bigger and larger in their lives.

 

For all of us who have developed this daily habit it has not come easily.  Experts say that we have to deliberately work at do something regularly for 4 to 6 weeks before it becomes an ingrained part of our lives.  The reality is that for many of us we have the best of intentions of developing a pattern of bible reading but other pressures of life (expected, but more likely unexpected) crowd in and push out our best intentions.

 

Recently, when we went to the Solomon Islands I needed to take malaria tablets.  They had to be taken for 2 days before we left Australia, all the time we were there and then 4 weeks after returning.  I don’t have a regular habit of taking tablets, so this was not going to be easy to take them every day for 6 weeks.  Whilst we were there it was easy to remember them, I was very conscious about doing a lot of things differently.  But when we returned and I went back to routine, I knew that it wouldn’t be so easy.  However, I have a routine that I follow unrelentingly.  Every morning I have breakfast, and every morning I have weet-bix for breakfast.  So I built my new tablet taking habit into my already established breakfast eating habit and put the malaria tablet box into the weet-bix box.  Before I could take the weet-bix out for breakfast, I first had to take my malaria tablet.

 

Are you able to combine a new daily bible reading habit with an existing habit?  Like me, do you put your daily bible reading guide into your cereal box and do your readings whilst you eat your breakfast?  We can combine our readings with technology and have the Live Light campaign emailed to you every day, or you can like it on Facebook of there is an app that you can download to your smartphone or tablet.  Do you establish a time that you will read the bible every day, before you leave the house, in the train on the way to work, in the afternoon before you go for a walk.  The important thing is to ensure that it becomes a daily part of your routine and not something that fits in around the other activities that you have.

 

“I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word” (Ps 119:15, 16).

 

A revamped website has a page for daily bible reading and journaling.  It contains suggestions on how to develop a pattern of daily bible reading.  There is also information on journaling and bible reading guides.  Check it out for more ideas and encouragement.