Read the bible in a month. Yes, seriously. A month.

January’s coming; you’re making resolutions, and one of ’em is to read the bible. As you should! It’s gonna make you more familiar with God. Some people unrealistically expect a new, profound God-experience every day as the Holy Spirit shows ’em stuff, but hopefully you’re more realistic about it. Hopefully you’re realistic about all your resolutions. Not everyone is.

So you need to read through through the entire bible, Genesis to maps. (That’s an old Evangelical joke. ’Cause a lot of study bibles include maps in the back. Okay, it’s less amusing once I explain it.) Every year Christians get on some kind of bible-reading plan to make sure they methodically go through every book, chapter, and verse. ’Cause when we don’t, we wind up only reading the familiar bits, over and over and over again—and miss a lot of the parts we should read. The reason so many Christians misinterpret the New Testament is because they know so very little of its Old Testament context. Every time I quote just a little bit of the Law to explain Jesus’s teachings, way too many people respond, “I’ve never heard that before.” Sadly, I know exactly what they’re talking about.

But part of the reason they “never heard that before” is because they totally forgot they did hear it. Because their bible-in-a-year reading plan had ’em read the Law back in February… and when they finally got to the gospels in September, they’ve clean forgot what they read in February. And by next February when they’re reading the Law again, they’ve clean forgot what they read in September.

So why take a year to read the bible? ’Cause everybody else is doing the bible in a year.

Seriously. It’s a big market. Publishers sell one-year bibles, which chop the scriptures into short daily readings. Sometimes really short daily readings, ’cause they’ll give you three readings: A chapter of the Old Testament, half a chapter of the New Testament, and half a psalm or some other poetry for dessert. If you don’t buy their specially sliced-up bible, there are websites which do it for you, or modules to add to your bible software, or you can just get a list of somebody’s bible-in-a-year plan and follow it yourself. Stick to it and in a year—a year!—you’ll have read the bible.

Yes the bible is a big thick book collection. But come on. It’s not so thick it takes a year to go through.

The year-long program makes the bible sound like this huge, insurmountable mountain to climb. It’s no such thing. Why, you can read it in a month. And no, I’m not kidding. A month. I’ve read it several Januarys in a row. Takes me three weeks.

Yes, there are bible-reading programs which read the bible in three months. That’s a little more reasonable. In fact if you wanna really get familiar with your bible, and quickly, it’s a great idea to do this three-month plan and read the bible four times in a year. (Ideally in four different translations.) Read it every time the seasons change—in December, March, June, and September. Get a bible-in-three-months plan and go with their schedule, or get a bible-in-a-year plan and read four times as much.

If you struggle with reading, or reading comprehension, fine; there are six-month bible-reading plans. But when we’re talking a whole year to read the bible, this pace has serious drawbacks. And not just ’cause it makes the bible sound impossibly massive.

Resolutions: Our little stabs at self-control.

Speaking for myself, I’m not into new year’s resolutions.

Because I make resolutions the year round. Whenever I recognize changes I need to make in my life, I get to work on ’em right away. I don’t procrastinate till 1 January. (Though I admit I may procrastinate just the same. But not ’cause I’m saving up new changes for the new year.)

Here’s the problem with stockpiling all our lifestyle changes till the new year: Come 1 January, we wind up with a pile of changes to make. It’s hard enough to make one change; now you have five. Or 50, depending on how great of a trainwreck you are. Multiplying your resolutions, multiplies your difficulty level.

But hey, it’s an American custom. So at the year’s end a lot of folks, Christians included, begin to think about what we’d like to change about our lives.

Not that we want to change. Some of us don’t! But it’s New Year’s resolution time, and everyone’s asking what our resolutions are, and some of us might grudgingly try to come up with something. What should we change? Too many carbohydrates? Not enough exercise? Sloppy finances? Non-productive hobbies? Too many bucket list items not checked off?

Since our culture doesn’t really do self-control, you might notice a lot of Americans’ resolutions aren’t really about breaking bad habits, but adding new habits—good or bad. We’re not gonna eat less, but we are gonna work out more often. We’re not gonna cut back on video games at all, yet somehow find the time to pray more often. You know—unrealistic expectations.

True, a lot of us vow to diet and exercise. Just as many of us will choose to learn gourmet cooking, or resolve to eat at fancier restaurants more often. (Well, so long that the fancier restaurants provide American-size portions. If I only wanted a six-ounce piece of meat I’d go to In-N-Out Burger.)

True, a lot of us will vow to cut back on our screen time—whether on computers, tablets, phones, or televisions. Just as many will decide time isn’t the issue; quality is. They’ll vow to watch better movies and TV shows. Time to binge-watch the shows the critics rave about. Time to watch classic movies instead of whatever Adam Sandler’s production company farts out. (I used to say “poops out,” but that implies they’re making an effort.) Sometimes it’s a clever attempt to avoid cutting back on screen time—’cause they already know they won’t. And sometimes they honestly never think about it; screens are a fact of life.

As Christians, a lot of us will resolve to be better Christians. We’ll pray more. Meditate more. Go to church more consistently; maybe join one of the small groups. Perhaps read more bible—even all the way through. Put more into the collection plate. Share Jesus more often with strangers and acquaintances. Maybe do some missions work.

All good intentions. Yet here’s the problem: It takes self-control to make any resolution stick. It’s why, by mid-March, all these resolutions are likely abandoned. So if we’re ever gonna stick to them, we gotta begin by developing everybody’s least-favorite fruit of the Spirit: Self-control.

Hanukkah.

The Hebrew lunisolar calendar doesn’t sync with the western solar calendar. That’s why its holidays tend to “move around”: They don’t really. Passover is always on the same day, 15 Nisan, but in our calendar it wobbles back and forth between March and April. Likewise Hanukkah is always on the same days, 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet. But in the western calendar, in 2024, this’d be sundown 25 December to sundown 2 January.

Christians sometimes ask me where Hanukkah is in the bible, so I point ’em to this verse:

John 10.22 KJV

And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter.

The “feast of the dedication” is Hanukkah. The word חֲנֻכָּה/khanukká (which gets transliterated all sorts of ways, and not just because of its extra-phlegmy kh sound) means “dedication.” Other bible translations make it more obvious—

John 10.22 NLT

It was now winter, and Jesus was in Jerusalem at the time of Hanukkah, the Festival of Dedication.

—because their translators didn’t want you to miss it, whereas other translators figure that’s on you.

Hanukkah is an eight-day holiday which celebrates the Hasmoneans’ rededication of the temple in 165BC.

The 12 days of Christmas.

Today’s the first day of Christmas. Happy Christmas!

After which there are 11 more days of it. 26 December—which is also Boxing Day and St. Stephen’s Day—tends to get called “the day after Christmas,” but it’s not. It’s the second day of Christmas.

The Sunday after Christmas (and in many years, including 2025, two Sundays after Christmas) is still Christmas. So I go to church and wish people a happy Christmas. And they look at me funny, till I remind them, “Christmas is 12 days, y’know. Like the song.”

Ah, the song. They sing it, but it never clicks what they’re singing about.

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me

A partridge in a pear tree.

On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Two turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Three french hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree.

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me

Four calling birds, three french hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree.

We’re on the fourth day and that’s 20 frickin’ birds. There will be plenty more, what with the swans a-swimming and geese a-laying. Dude was weird for birds. But I digress.

There are 12 days of Christmas. But our culture focuses on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day… and we’re done. Department store policy is to remove the Christmas merchandise on 26 December (if not sooner!) and start putting up New Year’s and St. Valentine’s Day stuff. If the Christmas stuff is already sold out, fill ’em with the next holidays’ stuff now. So the stores grant us two days of Christmas; no more.

Really, many people can’t abide any more days of Christmas than that. When I remind people it’s 12 days, the response is seldom surprise, recognition, or pleasure. It’s tightly controlled rage. Who the [expletive noun] added 11 more days to this [expletive adjective] holiday? They want it done already.

I understand this. If the focus of Christmas isn’t Christ, but instead all the Christian-adjacent cultural traditions we’re forced to practice this time of year, Christmas sucks. Hard. Especially since Mammonists don’t bother to be like Jesus, and practice kindness and generosity. For them Christmas is about being a dick to any clerk who wishes ’em a “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” I don’t blame people for hating that behavior. Really, Christians should hate it. It’s works of the flesh, y’know.

Christmas, the feast of Christ Jesus’s nativity (from whence non-English speakers get their names for Christmas, like Navidad and Noël and Natale) begins 25 December and ends 5 January. What are we to do these other 11 days? Same as we were supposed to do Christmas Day: Remember Jesus. Meditate on his first coming; look forward to his second coming. And rejoice; these are feast days, so the idea is to actually enjoy yourself, and have a good time with loved ones. Eat good food. Hang out. Relax. Or, if you actually like to shop, go right ahead; but if you don’t, by all means don’t.

It’s a holiday. Take a holiday.

Curses: “You take that back!”

CURSE kərs noun. A solemn utterance, meant to invoke supernatural evil, punishment, or harm.

2. verb. Invoke supernatural evil, punishment, or harm.

3. noun. Cause of evil or suffering.

[Curser 'kərs.ər noun.]

Years ago, when I taught at a Christian school, I had a mom ask for a meeting to object to something I wrote on her son’s report card. The boy wanted to grow up to have a highly technical job… but he didn’t do his homework. In any of his classes. I’d told him more than once, “If you don’t do your homework, you’re not gonna get the future you want.” And that’s what I wrote on his report card… and his mom was offended. She claimed I’d “word-cursed” him.

What on earth is a “word curse”? It’s a curse. In some churches they claim every negative thing we say, whether we intend them to be acutal binding curses or not, are actual binding curses. And true, sometimes the things we say will get into someone’s head and affect them for years. I’ve met people who were seriously hindered by the awful things their parents, teachers, pastors, bosses, or coaches told them. They believed that junk, and it still messes with them. It surely worked like a curse! So that’s what these Christians claim they are. It’s an unpleasant word… which is functionally a curse.

Okay, those who teach about “word curses” kinda have a valid point. But by their definition of “word curses,” I actually didn’t curse the boy. My comment is an if-then statement. If you don’t do X, then Y. It’s conditional. And a whole bunch of God’s messages are conditional: If you obey him, then you get blessed. If you don’t, then you don’t. That’s not a curse; that’s a warning. Fulfill the conditions!

Ultimately she agreed with me… but I can’t fault her at all for being sensitive about curses. I certainly didn’t wanna hinder my student by making him believe he wasn’t capable. Quite the contrary!

But you’ll find certain Christians are extremely sensitive about “word curses.” And of course regular curses. And “cursing,” by which we mean profanity, which is a whole other discussion.

Among certain dark Christians, every negative statement—more accurately, anything they can interpret as a negative statement, and they pessimistically interpret a whole lot of things as negative statements!—counts as a curse. Fr’instance I could say, “Hmm, looks like rain,” and to their minds I just cursed the sky. Seriously. “You take that back! Don’t you call rain down on us!” As if my casual observation has the power to call down rain—and y’know, if it could, I’d make a fortune.

See, according to these fearful folks, all our words—including idle ones—spoken into the atmosphere, have the power to create and destroy. They figure we humans are made in God’s image, Ge 1.27 and since he has the power to call things into existence with a word, they claim we have the very same power. Way lesser; I can’t state like God can, “Let the waters separate from the dry ground,” and instantly my swimming pool has been drained. But somehow, to some degree, I have the semi-divine power to make stuff out of nothing. My uneducated weather forecast can actually make weather.

Which is rubbish; it’s based on pagan “mind science,” the 19th-century belief that reality is in fact a mental illusion, and we have the power to affect and change the illusion if we believe hard enough. It’s what the Christian Science church teaches. It’s not consistent with the scriptures; God created a real, external, objective universe. I could believe really hard that my words (without any Holy Spirit to empower ’em, of course) can stop tornadoes… but I’d be a moron to bet on it.

Don’t get me wrong. The spoken word isn’t a powerless thing. Words can build up; words can tear down. I can make someone’s day by giving ’em a compliment. I can ruin their life by criticizing ’em at the wrong time. That’s what Solomon meant when he wrote death and life are in the tongue. Pr 18.21 For this reason, Christians need to watch what we say. We never know the direction we’re influencing people.

But the idea my words have magical power that might trigger a reaction in nature around us, and create all sorts of unintended horrors: Not biblical. Ridiculous.

And illogical too. You’ll notice all the Christians who fear accidentally destroying stuff through their “word curses,” somehow never worry about accidentally blessing stuff. “Gee, it looks like the weather today will be really nice!” never seems to force the clouds to dissipate. Nope. Blessings have always gotta be intentional, but curses can be accidental.

Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.

Luke 1.39-45.

Jesus comes from a family of prophets. Mary and Joseph heard from angels, same as Daniel. Mary’s relatives Elizabeth and Zechariah heard directly from the Holy Spirit, same as all the other prophets of the Old Testament. As did Elizabeth and Zechariah’s son, the prophet John the baptist.

And of course this is no coincidence. God wanted his Son raised by and among people who sought his will and listened to him. Imagine how much friction the boy Jesus would have to grow up with if this weren’t the case. There was already plenty, even with the Spirit’s activity in his family! Remember when they lost him in Jerusalem? Or when they saw him overworking himself, and thought he’d lost his marbles?

Thing is, whenever I point out this fact, Christians are regularly surprised. And either respond, “Oh… obviously God surrounded his Son with prophets!” or “Oh they’re not prophets; they just happened to have a one-time angelic appearance.” Or have three prophetic dreams, yet somehow that doesn’t qualify Joseph of Nazareth to be a prophet. even though one such dream qualified Daniel when he interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. Da 2

The problem is cessationism. Too many Christians think God completely stopped speaking through prophets between Malachi and John, and these “silent years” weren’t over till Gabriel started appearing to people. If you wanna get right down to it, they figure God stopped speaking when the Old Testament was complete, then started up again once he decided a New Testament needed to be written. It’s Darbyist dispensationalist rubbish. But it’s popular rubbish, and it warps popular bible interpretation.

As a result of cessationists’ false, faithless belief, popular Christian culture isn’t familiar with how prophecy works, and can’t recognize a prophet when they see ’em. So when Jesus’s family members do something prophetic, it goes right over their heads. It’s a miracle; they’ll admit to that at least. But prophecy has become a giant blind spot.

Fr’instance today’s passage: When Mary visits Elizabeth. Why’d she visit her? I kid you not: I’ve heard it preached, multiple times, Mary went to Elizabeth because she wanted to hide her pregnancy from the gossipy Nazareth women. ’Cause that’s what women used to do in our country when they got pregnant outside of wedlock: They were sent away to “visit relatives.” Then they came back with a new “baby sister” or “cousin.” (Or, if they aborted the baby, or let someone else adopt it, nothing.) This, they figure, is what Mary was doing: Hiding.

Was that how first-century Israeli culture worked? Nope! If people found out an unmarried couple were having sex (and pregnancy would definitely be one way they found it out), they had to marry, and they were forbidden to divorce. Dt 22.29 The man had to pay her dad a dowry; Ex 22.16-17 that made ’em married. It’s in the Law. Nobody has to visit relatives, or hide anything.

So why’d Mary visit Elizabeth? Because Gabriel gave her Elizabeth as confirmation of his prophecy.

Luke 1.36 KWL

“And look: Your relative Elizabeth

has conceived a son in her old age.

This is actually her sixth month—

and she was called sterile.”

Mary didn’t know this. Nobody knew this. Elizabeth secluded herself as soon as she found she was pregnant. Lk 1.24 But Elizabeth was the proof Mary’s pregnancy came from God.

I know; people claim Mary never doubted Gabriel, and totally believed him. But that’s not consistent with the scriptures. Why would Mary then rush to visit Elizabeth? Lk 1.39 Why wouldn’t she simply sit back at home, wait for the news that Elizabeth had—beyond all expectations—given birth, and bask in the knowledge she was gonna be the mother of Messiah?

Because of course Mary doubted. It’s a reasonable doubt! God hadn’t done anything like this before, and you know how often people insist God doesn’t do new things—even though he totally does. Mary needed certainty, and Elizabeth could give it to her. So off she went.

Prayer and posture.

I neither close my eyes nor bow my head when I pray.

Yep, that’s right. My eyes are wide open. Sometimes I’m looking forward, sometimes upward, and sometimes downward.

• Sometimes I’m reading the prayer I’ve written out. (You can do that, y’know!))
• Sometimes I’m reading a rote prayer.
• Sometimes I’m looking at a list of prayer requests so I can make sure I include them; or I’m journaling the prayer requests as the prayer leader lists them.
• Sometimes I’m looking up relevant scriptures in my bible.
• If I’m praying for someone who’s standing right in front of me, usually I’m looking at them.
• If I’m praying as part of a street-evangelism ministry, or any other kind of ministry on a busy street, I’m watching out for my fellow ministers. You realize how often people get pickpocketed when their eyes are closed for prayer? The pickpockets consider us suckers. We kinda are.
• If I’m working with kids, you know some of ’em take advantage of the times no one’s looking. I sure did! So they catch me looking.

As for that last thing I listed: Sometimes the kids come ask me later, “Why were your eyes open? You know you’re s’posed to close your eyes.”

Says who? Well, some pastors: “Bow your heads with me. Now with every eye closed…” Usually ’cause they want to ask if anyone wants to confess, or come to Jesus, and they wanna give people some privacy… and if that’s the case, I’ll look down so I don’t see anything. When I don’t need to know, I don’t pry. But nope, even then I don’t close my eyes. Don’t need to.

And closing our eyes doesn’t come from the bible anyway. It’s western custom.