Just a little longer

Yesterday I had an unbelievable workout which turned into reverse procrastination in a way. I recently adopted a fitness goal to get at least 10 minutes, while aiming toward 15 minutes, of exercise a day on our Nustep cardio machine with Sundays off. After the first 10 minutes I decided to aim for another 5 minutes. Followed by another set and another before forcing myself to stop at 25 minutes out of fear of overdoing it. Hard to really explain the rush at the time and a feeling of accomplishment from getting icky enough from the workout to need to shower afterward despite exercising inside with air conditioning. Even though it came to me as a surprise as what some might call a fitness high, in a way it should have been expected. I was following the advice of the fitness experts of starting with short workouts starting at around 10 minutes to build consistency first before endurance, while claiming that you will come to enjoy exercise in time. So in that sense what happened was to be expected because I was following their advice a healthier lifestyle.

I think the Bible also works by the same principal in a way. I’m sure everyone has heard complaints from someone that they find the Bible too boring to read, much like chronic couch potatoes will say that exercise is too physically demanding for them to manage. Yet just like we hear physical experts telling people the need to be physically active to stay healthy, we hear Christians, clergy and laymen alike talking about the importance of regular reading of the Bible and often advice reading through the entire Bible at least once a year. Yet according to statistics only around half of American Christians read the Bible on a weekly basis, most have never read the entire Bible and others read through the Bible once often in their younger days and have since set it aside for good. Yet the real shame is that it that reading through the entire Bible in a year only takes 3 chapters a day. Sure I realize that virtually nobody will go without any missed days so 4 chapters a day on most days might be more reasonable plan. Although to many this might seem as equally overwhelming as someone being told that they should exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, so why not try the 10 minute principle from our friends the fitness experts and recommend starting at reading a chapter of the Bible a day. Sure if might not sound impressive but if one kept it up they would read everything in 3 years but probably much sooner. As it turns out that Bible reading just like exercise becomes more enjoyable the more you do it as you become more in tune with the unique style of the Bible and God’s concerns contained within, so it is only natural to want to read for longer as time goes on. Also just like with exercise, the hardest thing with Bible reading is often getting started but once you do you’ll do fine. Just watch out that things don’t get out of hand as it is actually possible to fall into the trap of using Bible reading as a form of procrastination.