Happy New Year! 
Each new year my husband and I take time to evaluate the spiritual goals of our family and what we want to try to accomplish as we head forth into the coming twelve months.  This year was easy!  Our church has embarked on a plan to read through the New Testament in a year.  Our Children’s Director has encouraged us to either read aloud or help our children keep up with the reading so that everyone, young and old, will be engaged in this worthwhile process.  Though we have gone through just about every “children’s Bible story book” out there with our kids and have obviously read select verses or passages from the Bible, we’ve never taken upon such a challenge as to read straight through.  I’ve always been wistful of the days gone by when Papa would gather the children around the hearth and read God’s Word, straight from the Good Book.  So why has it never occurred to me that we could still do that?  Who knows?!  I guess it’s just that sometimes the most obvious things don’t occur to us until they hit us in the face!  Such was this year with the reading plan!  As our children’s director said, speaking of her first grade son, “How cool will it be that he, at eight years old, will be able to say that he’s heard the whole New Testament by the end of the year!”  Her intention was not that this would be a point of bragging.  Rather, that the Bible will have become accessible to him in a way that is not as often the case for our youngsters these days.  I remember as a college student, how daunting it seemed when I started reading the Bible through for the first time.  My hope for our children is that whenever they decide to take that challenge upon themselves, they will be more confident because of this year’s experience.  For now, we’re excited to see what fruitfulness God’s brings through the reading and hearing of His word through our NT2012 plan!

If you would like jump on in personally or with your family, check out http://www.youversion.com/reading-plans/project-345.  This details the NT read through we are doing, but the site offers many other reading plans and multiple ways to customize them. 

Happy Reading!