Other things I'm reading and listening to

Lest you be thinking it’s entirely fiction novels and music that’s deliberately not Christian around here, I thought I’d tell you about something else I got for Christmas. Someone completely surprised me with their abundant generosity before Christmas and gave me a Koorong voucher hidden away inside a Christmas card. So, I popped in to the Koorong sale on Boxing Day with family, because popping in to Koorong is easily done in Toowoomba, which is where I was at the time (and it wasn’t even my idea!), and got myself something I have been wanting for a long time: an ESV study bible. (I’d tried in vain about half a dozen times to win one on various blogs, but my winning streak seems to extend only to Penguin Books.)

My luggage went 1.5 kg over on my return flight, and I thought ‘yes, I know why’, because you could kill somebody with this book (and I had a few other additional books, plus various other bits and pieces my Mum was trying to give me, also), but it contains great things. I’m only a few chapters into Genesis, but so far, very good. Let me say two things that are genuinely true: 1) I don’t always find reading the OT entirely gripping; and 2) I was actually gripped while reading the articles The Theology of the Old Testament, Introduction to the Pentateuch, and Introduction to Genesis (there’s also an Overview of the Bible article, which was also good). So my aim this year is really just to get as far as I can get through it.

I also discovered the ESV audio online and have been listening on my iPod, using the method described here. I don’t know if that is 100% legitimate (if somebody thinks not, then tell me), and I am probably going to buy the whole bible at some point, but I downloaded Genesis 1-5 this week and listened to it each of the three days I went to work as I walked there, in the hope that this would help it kind of seep in somewhere. (And I am with the guy at the post linked about with his choice of voice – it doesn’t seem that you can buy ready-made discs with David Cochran Heath’s voice, and some of the others I find a little too dramatic, but you can download MP3s of him reading here.)