My Bible in 3.6 Years Plan

Amelia Bentrup encourages taking small, successful steps toward spiritual growth rather than getting bogged down in trying to make big changes.

I am sure many of you are familiar with the popular Bible in a Year podcast with Father Mike Schmitz from Ascension Press. Many of you have probably listened to this podcast in the past or are currently listening to it. After “completing” it two years in a row, I started it for the third time this year and made it about one-fourth of the way through before quitting.

Why did I quit? I was able to keep up with the podcast. In fact, I “listened” to it every day. I put the word “listen” in quotation marks because while I was hearing it, I wasn’t listening to it. I used to listen while walking or running or driving, always multi-tasking, always doing something else, and my mind would wander and wander. In fact, I could listen to an entire episode only to realize at the very end that I had just listened to that exact same episode yesterday, but I didn’t realize it until the very end when I heard some analysis or commentary or phrase that I realized I'd just heard the day before.

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Maybe it is undiagnosed ADHD? Maybe I have difficulty with auditory processing? Maybe it is just "mom brain" and being too tired and having too many things filling my mind. But whatever it is, I have a very difficult time processing things I hear. I hear them, but don’t really listen.

I tried doing the Bible in a Year reading plan on my own, just reading the books and chapters in the order given, but it was too much. I could not keep up with that much reading each day, so I ended up getting more and more discouraged and eventually gave that up too.

So I came up with my own plan. I am calling it "The Bible in 3.6 Years Plan." After doing a quick search, I learned that there are 1334 chapters in the Catholic Bible. If I read one chapter a day, it will take me approximately 3.6 years to read the entire Bible. This may seem like a long time, but it will be an entire Bible that I have read and absorbed rather than just heard, but not really listened to.

Reading three to four chapters a day and actually absorbing the content is not realistic for me. However, I can read one chapter a day. And some days, when I reach those short Psalms, I may even read two or three. Certainly, it is better than reading zero chapters a day and at the end of 3.6 years, still not having read and absorbed the Bible.

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I want to encourage you all to take small steps toward holiness and growing in spiritual life. This goes for praying, reading the Bible, reading the Catechism, devotional reading, or whatever God is calling you to do. If 30 minutes of dedicated prayer each day seems like too much, try just 10 minutes. Even two minutes is better than zero minutes. Get really good at those two minutes. Make them count. Really dedicate those two minutes toward God and growing closer to Him.

Sometimes I think we are so paralyzed by the feeling the need to “go big or go home” that we just go home or never leave in the first place. If we can’t have a picture-perfect, dedicated prayer and Bible time first thing in the morning, complete with a cup of coffee and birds singing on the front porch and zero interruptions from children, then we just forget the whole idea and feel we do not have time to pray. I felt like that for many years.

However, I have come to learn that it is small steps that matter. Get good and consistent and regular at praying for just two minutes a day, then you can start to add more. Turn those two minutes into five minutes, and then into 10 minutes. Maybe reading an entire chapter or section of a spiritual book each day seems too daunting, but you could probably read a page or two. Keep a book handy by your bedside and aim for just a page or two before bed or first thing in the morning.

We may not all be in a position to attend daily Mass, but maybe we could read the daily Mass readings. We may not be able to do a dedicated holy hour each week, but if we have an open church available to us, we could stop by and visit Jesus for just five to ten minutes on our way and to or from other places we are going. And we may not all be able to read the Bible in a year, but maybe we could read it in 3.6 years.

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