Last month I wrote the following: January is the start of the new year and the beginning of our goals for the year. One of your goals for the coming year should be a daily reading of the Bible, and it is helpful that you use the Orthodox Study Bible. On the back pages you can find information concerning the importance of reading and understanding the bible. His Eminence Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia (UK), wrote “that we are never to forget that what we find in the Bible is not an ideology, not a philosophical theory, but a historical faith. He ends his message with the following paragraph. “At the high point of his spiritual crisis, wrestling with himself alone in the garden, Saint Augustine heard a child’s voice crying out, “Take up and read, take up and read.” He took up his bible and read; and what he read altered his entire life.”

Let us do the same: Take up and read. It may be time in our lives to do what Metroploitan Kallistos instructs us with his story of St. Augustine, take up and read. The complete schedule of reading the entire New Testament in the course of one year is printed in the Reading section of this website. This is a possible goal for all of us.

The readings take place on Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday are left for further study of the previous chapters. All the readings are from the New Testament in the New King James Version as found in the Orthodox Study Bible. Notes referring to the reading for the day are listed on the bottom of the page containing the reading. These notes may help you in your study. It is not too late to begin this effort and there is always time to catch up. May we all be encouraged by the sound of the child in the garden crying out,

“Take up and read, take up and read.” Do not be left out!