Now, here is a thing. Here is a wondrous thing.

Reading the Bible is an integral part of knowing about God, being a Christian, wanting to know more about the Christian faith and generally living the good life. However, most people haven’t a clue where to start with it.

Fortunately, the church in its wisdom publishes a list of suggested bible readings for every day of the year. Unfortunately, they are in a format that does not help people look things up very easily. You have to know which year of the two year cycle we are on, you have to know what season we are in and you have to know whether today’s readings have been budged out of the way by a festival. Then you have to look it all up in a spiral bound book which is falling to bits. (Trust me on this, it is falling to bits).

Anyway. As a further offering in my quest to make the spirituality of the church more accessible to everyone rather than just professionals, I thought I would produce a wee bookie with all the readings in for 2009.

So here it is – a Daily Prayer Calendar of Bible Readings.

So now you have your new year resolutions all sewn up. You can read the Bible every day using the same readings that are used in St Mary’s and in the wider Scottish Episcopal Church at Daily Prayer services. You can fit them into prayers if you want them or just do then at a time of day to suit you. Unless there is something more specific given, we do the Old Testament and Gospel at morning prayer in St Mary’s. The theory is, if we said Evening Prayer in public it would be the Epistle and Gospel.

What do you mean you don’t have a Bible? Go and get one. You want an Anglicised NRSV with Apocrypha. Stop making excuses.

I’ve also tagged onto the Daily Calendar a table of what colours we use on different days in church because people are always interested and I’ve included a list of the biblical abbreviations that are used in the tables.

Enough to get you started?

Any questions?