The School Bus Bible

How reading scripture every day can be so easy—but still so hard to do on your own

By: Bethany Barnett, Read-a-Chapter-a-Day Project Manager

Buying a Real Bible

The summer before I started middle school, I begged my mom for a “real” Bible. I’d received a “third-grade Bible” when I finished second grade at my church, but that was a Bible for kids. I wanted to read scripture unedited. I wanted to read the Bible that the adults in my life were reading. And I wanted to read the whole thing from cover to cover.

Soon we were off to the Family Christian Bookstore, a little shop in Wichita, Kansas, that is now closed but once held shelves full of Christian-living books, cases of Christian movies, walls packed with biblical artwork and decor, and of course, stacks of different versions of the Bible.

As I looked at the options, I saw study Bibles and easy-to-read Bibles, Bibles for men, Bibles for women, and Bibles for kids. There were leatherbound Bibles as thick as my feet were long and slim hardcover New Testaments. There were King James Bibles and paraphrased Bibles like The Message. There were even accessories like personalized Bible covers, special highlighters that wouldn’t go through the Bible-thin pages, and tabs to help you find the book of the Bible you were looking for.

At the time, I didn’t know exactly what kind of Bible to look for. Now I know what it means for someone to choose a Harper Collins Study Bible over the New International Version (or the reverse). But at the time, I just wanted a Bible that told people,I’m reading the Bible for real.

I walked out of that bookstore with a slender leatherbound English Standard Version. The cover was dark brown and embossed with a raised snake-print texture. Everything Jesus said was written in red letters, and my mom had purchased colorful tabs to go with it. Later, she would carefully place each tab on its corresponding page while I looked over her shoulder. My Bible was perfect. I couldn’t wait to start reading.

Reading the Bible for the First Time

It turns out reading the Bible from cover to cover is hard.

Although I had quickly torn through Genesis and Exodus, Leviticus turned out to be a doozy. My pace started to slow at Leviticus 12 which is titled “Purification After Childbirth” and followed by Leviticus 13, “Laws about Leprosy.” Although I was an avid reader, I began to realize that I wasn’t going to get through all 1,042 pages of my new Bible at the same pace that I had read the Dealing with Dragons series by Patricia Wrede. It just wasn’t the kind of thing I could stand to read for hours at a time. But school was starting soon, and it turned out that the school bus provided the perfect opportunity to read God’s word.

I lived in the country, not on a farm, but we had two acres a few minutes outside of town, near the highway. For whatever reason, my parents never drove my sister and me to school. Instead, we got on the bus. Route 2 was driven by a sour driver, Suzie, who never wanted us to talk above a whisper, use our phones, or even pop in an earbud to listen to something. By 6:30 every morning, I’d already finished all my homework so I couldn’t work on math equations like I did on the bus ride home. That left only one thing to do: read. So, every day, I packed up my ESV alongside my textbooks and read one or two chapters on the way to school.

It’s easy to read the Bible when you have nothing else to do. It’s even easier to contemplate scripture for thirty minutes when the only other option is to stare out a bus window. During that time, I came across a lot of things that I’d never heard about in church. I wondered about a lot of things for the first time:

• I wondered why God talked about welcoming the stranger so much, but we didn’t seem to do that at home. Or talk about it in church.
• I wondered why so many of the people in the Bible I was taught to idolize in Sunday school seemed like bad people when you read their whole story.
• I wondered why I saw Christians on the news cheering for the death of foreign enemies when Jesus insisted that we love our enemies.
• I wondered why my dad had taught me to be good at saving and investing money when Jesus told us to give all our money away.

I didn’t discover the answers to these and many other questions until years later. I still struggle to answer some of them. But the important thing is that reading God’s word guided me toward asking such difficult questions in the first place. And asking those questions changed the course of my life.

Confessions of a Bible Nerd

It took me four years to read that leather-bound ESV, but I finished it. It went from a shiny new Bible to one with much of its leather scuffed and crumbling. Today, it has old, useless notes scribbled in its narrow margins, its pages are dogeared and crinkled, and the tab for the book of Ezra has clear tape holding it together. I have prayers and guides for spiritual practices written on the inside cover. For many years, I kept an obituary for a childhood friend tucked inside it before the newspaper clipping slipped out and was lost. My Bible has been read, toted around, tripped over, written on, and prayed over.

I have a Bible that looks like a family heirloom.

And yet.

I’ve never read the Bible from cover to cover since.

I got an undergraduate degree in intercultural studies, the degree missionaries get. I’ve attended seminary. I married a pastor. I even make a living reading and editing Christian books.

But I haven’t read the whole Bible since I was an early teen.

There was something special, sacred, about that bus ride to school. I can’t seem to replicate that in my adult life. Now that I have control over my own schedule, I fill it with important things, entertaining things, and things that just pass the time until the next thing happens. I’ve tried to read the Bible again—many times—but few things have worked for more than a handful of days.

I’ve concluded that I cannot read the Bible on my own. Although other spiritual practices come to me more easily, many of them are fueled by attending church every week. A hymn from the service gets stuck in my head and suddenly I’m worshiping on dog walks or while baking cookies. Someone mentions a prayer request, and the people weigh heavy on my heart until I pray for them. Even my work helps me out sometimes: I’ll read a Christian book I’m busy editing and find a way to incorporate its wisdom into my day or week.

But reading scripture doesn’t happen by accident. At least not for me. It seems to happen only when I decide to read it with others. I read all four gospels in three or four weeks when I took a New Testament class, and the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John became required reading. I read all the chapters of Genesis pertaining to Abraham when I committed to teaching a class on the Abrahamic covenant. And I read the book of Esther when I wrote an outline for a fiction novel based on its principles as part of a writing exercise. I can’t seem to read the Bible by myself. But I can when others—when the church—reads it with me.

Inviting Others to Read the Bible with Us

Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you can’t seem to crack open the pages of your Bible unless you’re doing it to keep up with your small group or if you told a friend you’d read it with them. That’s okay! Genesis 2:18 reminds us that we were not created to be alone. That’s why God made more than one person. That’s why God built the church, so we could rely on one another to build up each other’s faith.

This is why I am so delighted to be participating in Read-a-Chapter-a-Day this fall. It’s giving me a great excuse to read forty-two chapters of the Bible alongside so many people. Each one of you who chooses to read the Bible with me is another reason I am committing to keeping up with the readings and allowing them to transform me through contemplation and prayer. I pray that the Read-a-Chapter-a-Day community will give you plenty of reasons to pick up your Bible each day and spend time with God as well.

If you are like me, and need a community of people to read the Bible, I hope that you will prayerfully consider these questions:

• Who should I invite to read the Bible with me? Who is reliable enough to read with me every day? Who loves God and will offer insights into scripture I may have overlooked?
• Am I able to lead a small group of readers at my church? Is there a group of people who already meet who would like to discuss the weekly readings using a small group guide? Who would attend a small-group if I formed a new one? (small group materials available soon!)
• Can I connect to Bible readers beyond my own community? What online groups already exist that are dedicated to reading the Bible daily? Which of my long-distance family or friends would love to connect with God and me by reading the Bible together?

I hope that you will have the courage to ask the people that God puts on your heart to read with you over this six-week journey. I know that I need others to read the Bible with me as much as they need me to read with them.

Know that my prayers are over you and those you are reading the Bible with now and in the coming weeks.

Next Steps

• Have you registered yet to join us as we read scripture for six weeks this fall? Read more about the initiative here and sign up here and you will receive twice-weekly emails with readings, resources, and encouragement.
• Check out our Resources page to find a download of the reading plan, testimonies from other readers, and small group materials.
• Don’t have a small group? Join a weekly Zoom discussion meeting on Sunday nights from 7-8 p.m. Central. Register here.

Bethany Barnett is a Christian writer and editor who lives in Southern Illinois. She loves brewing herbal tea, taking long walks and hikes, and drafting outlines for stories she will probably never write. Her current book recommendation is We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.