Day 25. It is about now that I normally quit.
The Bible in One Year is an annual resolution. "This year will be the year," I think on January 1. And inevitably it isn't.
But 2017 has a striking difference. The 'BIOY' app contains audio, read by actor David Suchet, for each day. The 80 hours of published recordings took more than 200 hours of studio time and an estimated 400 hours of background Bible study beforehand. That is five hours of preparation for every one hour of recording.
Suchet's extraordinary commitment to understanding the context, history and emphasis behind each passage he read has produced what is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Listening to the Bible has, unsurprisingly, transformed my reading of the Bible.
I find it particularly with Suchet's recitations of the Psalms and Proverbs – a dose of which are contained in each day's allocated reading.
"Let love and faithfulness never leave you," says Proverbs 3 in the reading for January 24. "Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart."
There is something about listening to those words that makes them stand out more than reading them. I can't pin down what is different. But it just is.
Perhaps it is because that is how the Bible was designed to be shared.
The original Hebrew Bible and early New Testament passages would have been read aloud in public spaces by one of the few people who could read. So for most people the scriptures were heard but not read. The stories were orally transmitted and passed down from generation to generation largely by people who heard them but never read them.
It is only relatively recently that private Bible reading became commonplace. The experience before was communal. And it was heard out loud.
So it is not surprising there is a certain magic to listening to these ancient texts.
Speaking of his experience reading the whole Bible, Suchet said: "I think what is surprising when reading the Bible out loud is over and over again I hear in my head as I am reading it a quote from the Bible: 'Hear the word of the Lord.'
"It doesn't say 'read the word of the Lord.' It says 'hear the word of the Lord.'"
The committed Christian added: "It is my prayer that everybody hearing my reading with feel the same thing – that it will be fresh! And they will think, as I think when I am reading it, 'Gosh! This is fantastic!'"
It is not too late to start the Bible in One Year. Download the app here.
And read Martin Saunders' tips from his own failures and successes at Bible reading.
