Read the Bible in a Year

2 01 2009

Alright so I said I wouldn’t make any new years resolutions, and I’m not. This is not really a new resolution, it’s more of a continual battle to do something I really want to do, but can never seem to slot the time for, or be organized enough to follow through on.

However, since I’m a techie at heart and spend a lot of time on my shiny new Macbook Pro (sorry, anytime I can brag about this machine, I’m going to do it), anything in electronic format immediately becomes more appealing to me. So when I saw this on Luke Mundy’s twitter stream, I became very interested. Therefore I present you with YouVersion.com.

I know, I think it’s a stupid name too for a bible reading website. After all, I don’t want MY version, I want God’s version, right? Ah well…. anyway, it’s basically a very cool site where you can go to read and search the Bible in many different translations (No King James version for me, thank thee very much). And they provide a one year reading plan, which basically consists of a few chapters each from several parts of the Bible for each day. That may sound like a lot, but it’s really not.

They also have some other cool features like a community chat section which is tied to verses or chapters so you can see other people’s thoughts on a particular subject. They also provide a journal section where you can keep private notes about what you’ve just read. And the coolest of all; They have an iPhone version.

Reading the Bible could not get any easier or more convenient. Check it out.

http://YouVersion.com


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Categories : Books, Life, Religion

Blue Like Jazz

13 03 2008

About a month or so ago my buddy Paul gave me a book called Blue Like Jazz: Non Christian Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Don Miller. Now I’m a reader, so I was stoked to get something new and something I had never heard of before, so I cracked it open and read a few pages and I was completely confused. This was supposed to be a Christian book, yet this Don Miller guy sounds kind of like a liberal hippie! He has friends that go to protests and he lives “in community”. Doesn’t sound at all like a “Christian” to me!

So like I said, I was confused. But Paul had given it to me, and I trust his opinion, so I figured I must be missing something. So I went to Amazon’s review section and pulled up the negative reviews. When you want to know what a product is like, only look at the bad reviews. If they are all petty and nitpicky, you are probably looking at a pretty good product. Anyway, the bad reviews all said pretty much the same thing… the book was bad because Don Miller isn’t “Christian” enough. I immediately re-opened the book and plowed through the rest of it. It was probably one of the best Christian books I have ever read.

The reason this book is so good is because it’s one man’s story of his Christian journey. It reads almost like a diary, talking about different situations in his life and what he learned from them. It’s very light on direct scripture quotes (I can’t remember seeing one) and very heavy on emotion and self examination. It’s light on religious jargon and judgmental attitudes, and heavy on relationships and love. This bothers a lot of people because they think it indicates moral relativity, but Miller obviously has read and knows the Word, and I think in his reflective, moody way, he nails the essence of Christianity better than just about any author I’ve read.

So I highly recommend it to Christians and non-Christians alike. Good stuff.


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Categories : Books, Religion