Continuing on from last year, each week in 2026 I will post 2 chapters to read per day as the main reading plan, and for anyone who wants to read the whole Bible in 2026, I’ll post the extra chapters to read that week. The main readings will include nearly all of the New Testament, plus Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, and a few other Old Testament books.
Reading 3 chapters a day on weekdays and 4 on weekends almost exactly covers the 1,189 chapters of the Bible, so the “extra” readings will be about 9 chapters per week. These readings will cover the Pentateuch, the OT histories, a few other OT books, plus Jude and Revelation from the NT.
I hope this encourages others to read and study their Bible more, whatever parts they decide to read. Follow along (or not) any way you choose!
2 chapter a day plan:
Monday, January 5: Psalm 5, Matthew 5 Tuesday, January 6: Psalm 6, Matthew 6 Wednesday, January 7: Psalm 7, Matthew 7 Thursday, January 8: Psalm 8, Matthew 8 Friday, January 9: Psalm 9, Matthew 9 Saturday, January 10: Psalm 10, Matthew 10 Sunday, January 11: Psalm 11, Matthew 11
Extra chapters for those reading the whole Bible in 2026: Genesis 7-15
In response to a reader suggestion, I’ve figured out what Bible verses quoted the most here and will write a series about those verses. Today’s post is #1 of a top 10 countdown, starting with the verse quoted the least out of the 10 most quoted, Psalm 34:8.
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”
In my Accordance[1] Bible notes for this verse, I wrote: “God does not shower us with blessing upon blessing until we are convinced He is good and then we turn to Him. We must learn that He is good by trusting Him and learning to walk with Him. We learn that repentance is a good thing.” To me, there’s a lot in this verse.
One thing is that we must be active in our relationship with God, rather than waiting around for Him to solve our problems. We must each “taste and see,” not “wait and see.” The Psalmist (David) is comparing knowledge of God to food spread out before us. Unless we act and decide to eat the food, we will never truly know how good that food is. This requires us to turn from what we would do otherwise, which may be sin, and turn to God for our refuge. Repentance is often a requirement for learning of God’s goodness; we don’t learn about it by going our own way. We must take steps in response to our trust in Him.
Second, we don’t learn that He is good through the experiences of other people, but through our own experience, which we can only get through acting. Often when we ask people what something tastes like, the answer is “it tastes like chicken.” This isn’t literally true, but it does tell us that taste is hard to accurately share with and communicate to another person. We only really know what something tastes like through personal experience, and we can only know how good God is through personal experience.
It’s also implied that if we don’t taste of God’s goodness for ourselves, we might misunderstand it. We might believe incorrect things about God that we pick up from other sources than Him. Sometimes these messages come from the secular world, but sometimes they even come from within the church, because nobody and no church (and no blog!) is perfect. We can only get perfect and pure information about God from God Himself and as you might guess, that means consistent private Bible study, prayer, and meditation.
“Tasting and seeing” is similar in the verse to “taking refuge.” This verse means a lot to me because it can be a reminder when life isn’t going well, or if I just feel like it’s not going well, that I might need to take a different approach or get a different perspective from God. The verse suggests that the man who does not take refuge in him is not blessed, therefore we should make sure we are taking refuge in Him. Only by seeking out His answers to our problems can we know Him and experience His blessing, which we should value over all other kinds of blessing.
So, dear readers:
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”
[1] Bible software I use and highly recommend. Many of my blog posts start from notes I took in Accordance.
Regular readers will know that I am a fan of Douglas Adams’ science fiction comedy novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams makes a comic art form of extreme absurdity, and one such creation is the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. In the book, intergalactic hitchhikers are urged to always travel with a towel, and among the reasons is that a towel is handy to wrap around your head to “avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you)”[1] By simply covering your eyes, you can escape being devoured by this Beast, one of the least intelligent creatures in existence.
I thought of this Beast when reading Psalm 50:17, which says: “For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.” Why cast words behind us? So we can’t see them, and if we can’t see them, we think we can safely ignore them. Perhaps God will leave us alone, as if He does not exist. But the verse is a warning not to be like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. God can’t be swept under a rug and ignored.
There is an episode in the book of Ezekiel that would be comical if it weren’t so tragically similar to this Beast. Ezekiel’s many images, object lessons, and visions are designed to stir God’s people from complacency and turn back to Him. To fully convince Ezekiel that the nation was casting God’s word behind them, Ezekiel was taken in a vision inside the temple in Jerusalem, and this is what he saw:
“So I went in and saw. And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel. And before them stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand, and the smoke of the cloud of incense went up. Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, each in his room of pictures? For they say, ‘The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.’” – Ezekiel 8:10-12
Ezekiel was a prophet to Jews already exiled to Babylon, but Jerusalem itself had not yet fallen, and many Jews thought it was impossible. But inside the temple, the very place symbolizing God’s presence and glorious light, the elders of Israel were worshipping Egyptian-style animal deities and using incense to ward off evil spirits. They sinned, while saying God couldn’t see them because they don’t see evidence of Him in their circumstances: “the LORD has forsaken the land.” How like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal!
Later, in Ezekiel 9:9, the prophet records:“Then [God] said to me, “The guilt of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of blood, and the city full of injustice. For they say, ‘The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see.’”
Sometimes by casting His words behind us, we may think we are forsaken. We interpret His word in light of our circumstances, instead of interpreting our circumstances in light of His word. It is when the church acts like God doesn’t see that we should be fearful. When the church claims Jesus as Savior but not as Lord. When the church trusts in worldly power, not God’s power. When the church struggles to see how their very Maker and King is, as they say, “relevant.”
In Ezekiel chapter 10, the glory of Lord departs the Jerusalem temple entirely, and all of Judah was exiled, but Ezekiel’s message wasn’t finished. He also proclaims hope, most dramatically in chapter 37, the “Valley of Dry Bones” vision. Ezekiel sees dry bones scattered everywhere across a valley, symbolizing how spiritually dead God’s own people appear. The vision is a test for Ezekiel: would he look at the valley and assume, based on the immediate circumstances, that “The LORD has forsaken the land, and the LORD does not see”? In verse 3, he writes: “And he said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’” Ezekiel doesn’t jump to conclusions but trusts that God knows best: “And I answered, ‘O Lord GOD, you know.’” Symbolizing new life in Christ, even from death, God re-assembles the dry bones, adds sinew and flesh and skin, then breathes life into them, “and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.”[2]
In the Valley of Dry Bones, Ezekiel learned that God does see our dire situation, and He has a plan, even if we choose to look the other way. This plan is infinitely and eternally more “relevant” than any present (and temporary) circumstances.
In the New Testament the plan continues with an Ebenezer[3] moment, as the apostle Paul wrote: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:4-6)
[1] Adams, Douglas. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (1980). [2] Ezekiel 37:10b [3] Ebenezer, the ‘But God…’ Squirrel, is the blog’s mascot and a reminder that, no matter the situation, God can overcome it, and the words “But God…” in the Bible are often moments where that happens.
Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians from a Roman jail, to encourage them to continue forward in the faith. In it, he wrote: “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made [Christs righteousness] my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”[1]
In Paul’s life, “what lies behind” includes overseeing the stoning of Stephen recorded in Acts 7:57-58, and “ravaging the church, and entering house after house, [dragging] off men and women and committ[ing] them to prison.”[2] We all have different shameful things in our past, but God forgets them. His purpose is to always make us more like Christ, even when we struggle to move forward. The prize is worth it, therefore we “press on toward the goal,” even if our current situation is discouraging and seems hopeless.
After all, Paul knew that even prison was temporary and God could wash away all the sins of his past, present, and future to make him righteous like Christ.
It’s become a tradition here to post what books I read during the year. This year’s total was 23, relatively high for me, but I read a lot of short books. Last year I noted that I read less books (16) because of my struggle to get through the over 900 pages of The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim (1883). I still haven’t finished it even though I started in late 2023 and didn’t really try in 2025. Maybe in 2026 I can “close the book” on that one.
So, what books did I finish reading this year?
Fiction books (in order read):
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
I’ve read all of these before except Pride and Prejudice and A Christmas Carol. The first is one of my wife’s favorites and I finally read it and did enjoy it. The key is to know Austen is making fun of her characters. The second is a story we all know, but reading it fills in a lot of spaces. I was surprised at how funny it was.
Just like Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, I re-read Lewis’s Narnia books every few years and they are as good as ever. I’m in the middle of The Silver Chair now, and am alternating between these and other, “harder” books. It helps me stay motivated to read.
A few history books:
A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins Pax by Tom Holland Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides Wedding of the Waters by Peter Bernstein
Wedding of the Waters, a history of the building of the Erie Canal, is the only one of these I’d read before. Pax, a history of part of the Roman Empire, was very well written and interesting, but I expected it to cover the time period of the New Testament. It didn’t, but Dominion by the same author (which I got for Christmas) will probably cover that ground and more.
Plus several religious books:
In addition to regular Bible and study Bible reading, in 2025 I read:
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser Making Me, and Like the Stars by Glenn Parkinson Several books by Warren Wiersbe: Be Loyal (Matthew), Be Free (Galatians), Be Rich (Ephesians), Be Dynamic (Acts 1-12), Be Daring (Acts 13-28), Be Faithful (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon), Be Victorious (Revelation).
I picked up Wiersbe’s entire “Be” series in 2021 as part of a digital subscription and am working through it over time. A long time. I like his overall approach, and the books are a great source of thoughtful stories and quotes. I’ve covered 32 of the Bible’s 66 books so far!
Have you read any of these? What books did you enjoy in 2025? And speaking of reading, I want to thank all of you who take the time to read this blog. In 2025 I nearly doubled my views from 2025 (the previous high)! I don’t know what happened, but October through December of 2025 were very busy here.
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 