The Bible in a Year

Here is where people quit: Leviticus. Sometimes Numbers. Almost nobody gives up in Genesis, because Genesis is stories, and almost nobody gives up in the Gospels. They give up around day 40, in the middle of instructions about skin diseases and how to build a tent, when the daily reading stops feeling like anything and the missed days pile up. If you've tried this before and stopped, that's almost certainly where it happened, and it wasn't a character flaw.

So plan for it. Three chapters a day, about fifteen minutes, is the pace, and the schedule runs straight through from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, so you'll hit the hard stretch early and get it over with. When you're in it, lower the bar: read the chapters, don't study them, and let the focus be on getting to Joshua. Some days the reading is a genealogy. Read it anyway, quickly, and notice how it feels to be the kind of person who reads the boring bits. The app reads every chapter alongside you in language that makes the law and the prophets a lot less like wading, and it keeps your place so you never have to work out where you are.

Missing days is not falling behind. It's just missing days. The worst thing you can do is try to read four days' worth on a Sunday to make up for it; that's how people come to hate the Bible. If you miss a week, pick up where you stopped. If it takes you fourteen months, then it took fourteen months, and you'll have read the whole thing, which is the point. Nobody is checking the calendar except you.