Daily Bible Reading: A Morning Habit

Normally, my routine is the same.

I go downstairs, turn on the lights, and make my coffee.

Then I spend the next hour in the Bible.

The first Bible I ever owned was a big thick Catholic Bible. Father Peter Verde gave it to me. A lot of the old timers told me I wasn’t supposed to read the Bible. That was something only the priest was allowed to do. I Remember asking Fr. Verde about that. He said, “If I didn’t intend for you to read the Bible, I’d never have given you one.”

Sounded like permission to me.

So I read it. That’s not to say I understood much of it. But I read it, Genesis to Revelations.

And I didn’t touch it again until a night in Saudi Arabia. That was the night I came face to face with me. And I didn’t like what I’d ran into. Looking back, I packed all kinds of interesting stuff. I had my Walkman and about two dozen tapes of Rush, Lita Ford, and the likes. I had novels, lots of them. I had enough double A batteries to last forever.

But I didn’t pack a Bible.

And the only reason I had a Bible to take was because of the Chaplin. He was standing at the bottom of the stairs leading up to board the 747. And he was handing out Gideon New Testaments. I took it and stuffed into my cargo pocket next to the MRE they told us to put there.

But that night in Saudi Arabia, I got it out. I had nowhere else to turn. I felt I’d been running from God and I’d ran right into a wall at warp speed.

That night, I got it out and using my flashlight, I opened it at random.

I read the passage the small book opened to.

And as a famous song goes, I read about me. The Bible had opened to Luke 18, Verse 9 thru 14. Here it is:

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

⁹ To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

And every morning I get up and read my Bible. I try to read from at least three different books. Currently, I’m in Genesis, Isaiah, and Acts. Earlier I devoured 1st and 2nd Samuel, Proverbs, and the four Gospels. I read commentaries. Life applications. I mark and underline and write notes in the margins.

But no matter where I’m at, or done, I always turn to that passage from Luke. It’s a reminder that no matter how good I think I am, I’m still a man in need of a savior.