Don Whitney, author of several NavPress books, is the John H. Powell Endowed Chair of Pastoral Ministry at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Here are several short, practical posts from his always-timely book, Simplify Your Spiritual Life: Spiritual Disciplines for the Overwhelmed. In these selected excerpts, Whitney will help us consider ways to simplify our journaling, our prayer, our Christian life in general, our priorities, and our time in Scripture. In this post on the Christian life, Whitney will prompt you to read, just a little bit.
When life gets too complex, one of the first parts of a healthy spiritual life to decline is reading. I talk to well-intentioned Christians almost every week who confess to growing piles of books by their “reading” chair, desk, nightstand, and other places, but who never have time to read. Reading for sheer enjoyment was long ago forsaken. Reading for Christian growth rarely happens. Most days, a few minutes in the Bible is all that’s left of their reading. Those who love to learn and those who want to grow grieve the loss of reading like the loss of a close friend. “But what can I do,” they sigh, “there are only so many hours in a day.”
To these overwhelmed believers I usually ask, “Do you think you could find the time to read one page of a book each day?” No one has ever told me they couldn’t, no matter how busy they are or how many children they have. It might mean sneaking a page during a visit to the bathroom, sitting in the car an extra two minutes at the end of the morning or evening commute, or standing by the bed to read a moment before crashing into the pillow at night.
By reading one page per day you can read 365 pages in a year, or the equivalent of two full-length books. That may not sound like much, but it’s far better than not reading at all. By this means of just a page per day, I’ve seen mothers of multiple preschoolers, homeschooling moms, and overwhelmed executives alike plow through a book every month or two. It wasn’t because they had any less to do. Rather, the secret lay in the simple discipline of making the commitment to read just one page. Invariably, of course, when they read one page they decided to read more. The main problem was just getting to that first page. Once that was done, the rest was not only easy, but enjoyable as well.
Get back to the simple pleasure of good reading, one page at a time.
DONALD S. WHITNEY
DONALD S. WHITNEY (under photo, link to https://biblicalspirituality.org/)
Don Whitney holds the John H. Powell Endowed Chair of Pastoral Ministry at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he is professor of biblical spirituality and the director of the Center for Biblical Spirituality. He is the author of several books.