It is the end of January and thus the final of my January check-ins. My January mini-resolution was to read Romans 8 once per day. This check-in will be for the 25th – 31st January. Goodness, this month flew by, didn’t it?
I didn’t read daily this week – actually I skipped 3 days: Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. I’m not sure why I skipped Wednesday, but Friday we did have Bible Study, and Saturday honestly I have no excuse – we didn’t even have our usual Bible Study with my family because I woke up so late and exhausted. But to be honest, I don’t have an excuse for skipping my reading on any of those days.
I noticed this week that I was no longer as serious about reading it as I had been before. Perhaps it’s because I’d seen the same text day after day that I’d begun to get bored? Or, at least, the words weren’t sinking in properly anymore. Reading the passage daily almost became a chore.
However, today, after taking a couple days’ break from reading, I really enjoyed reading it again. In fact, I realised that I’d been able to recite more of the passage than I had before, and was able to commit more to memory than I had done in the past as well.
Perhaps with anything else in life: there are days when you need a bit of a break before getting back into it with more vigour. The Word of God should never be taken that way, of course; I am not saying it’s a good idea to take days off from spending time with God in devotion, meditation on the Word and prayer.
But since this is a specific resolution to read the same passage daily, perhaps it does help to give my brain some rest so it can retain some of what it’s read and not get tired of the repetition.
For February, I still haven’t quite figured out what I’d like to read. I haven’t sat down to devote time to memorise Romans 8 fully, though I can recite 80% of it by now. Still, I think I would like to put it aside for a little while and then come back to it.
Shall I move on to Romans 12? Or perhaps one of the Psalms… I’ll pray about it a little more, and will put up a new update post once I decide. I will, however, take 2 days’ rest per week from reading the passage: Fridays (fellowship) and Sundays (sabbath), to hopefully allow more time for the passage to sink in to my brain and avoid repetition fatigue.
Blessings,