In 2023, I decided to use a book we’ve had on our shelves for, probably, a couple of decades. I’ve glanced at it from time to time, but never worked through it. The authors are Rita and Neil McLaughlan, with Trevor J Partridge, and the topic - and the title of the volume - is ‘The Life of Christ’, with subtitle ‘365 daily readings’. My first slight quibble with the book is that they number the readings from 1 to 365 but don’t give any dates.
I understand the reasoning: that it’s not intended to be for specific dates, and that anyone can start at any point, and take as long as they want to work through it. But I prefer a yearly scheme, so I went through myself, adding (in pencil) the date on each page.
In addition to the daily readings and brief commentaries, there are some useful extra sections to the book. There’s a map at the beginning, for instance, showing the areas in which Jesus lived, with little numbered pinpoints. Those are referenced on the facing page, which lists the events in his life, from the initial announcement of his birth to the ascension. Scattered throughout the book are extra short sections with information about topics as diverse as an explanation of leprosy, information about Samaria, and brief details about the twelve chosen disciples.
But the bulk of the book is the daily reading sections, each one taking up about half a page. There’s a title at the top, between one and four short readings from the Bible, a commentary on the passages, a key quotation and thought or a prayer at the end. It’s not an unusual format, and each one would typically take between five and ten minutes to read, depending on how many passages there were, and whether I skimmed or read in a more thoughtful way.
In many of the sections, as I quickly discovered, there might be three passages of Scripture, but they would cover the same story, sometimes with almost exactly the same words. And as with many of these daily reading guides, there wasn’t much that was new to me. It’s always good to re-read the Bible, and I like having a focussed guide sometimes, rather than just reading straight through or dipping in at random. Some of the informational pages were interesting, too, and it was good to have the maps here and there to check.
I got very ‘behind’ when travelling, and started doing two sections at a time with the aim of catching up. Then for some reason I didn’t use this at all. I discovered online Bible-reading plans on my phone, and started using those. Early in December I decided that, rather than abandoning this book unfinished, I would like to finish it by the end of 2023. So I calculated that I needed to read at least four sections each day, sometimes more… and completed it today.
I’m glad I did it, but I must admit I didn’t always look up all the Bible verses, or check the ‘key’ ones at the end. And if there was a question or writing suggestion at the end of a section, I didn’t usually follow through. I think this would be an excellent introduction to the life of Jesus for a new believer, or someone with a general church background who would like to know more. It could also be good for a parent and child to work through together, enabling some discussion. Or, for someone like me, it gives a brief refresher course. However it was mostly quite factual, and while the commentary was thorough and (in my view) sound, it didn’t say anything unexpected or new to me.
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