30 days
The big story in 30 days
From creation to new creation: the great line of the Bible, one chapter a day.
The Bible is a library of 66 books, written by many people over more than a thousand years. Yet it tells one story: God makes the world, people turn away, and God goes after them, until everything is made new. In thirty days you read the knots in that thread, not everything. Each day says briefly what happened since the day before. A chapter takes about ten minutes.
0 of 30 days read
- Day 1Read Genesis 1
In the beginning
The story does not begin with people, but with God who speaks: 'Let there be light'. Other creation stories from that time, like the Babylonian Enuma Elish, turn the sun and moon into gods; Genesis simply calls them 'lights'. Christians differ on how to read the six days. Everyone does read this: everything is made good, and humans are made in God's image (1:27).
You are made in God's image. What does that say about you, and about the people next to you?
- Day 2Read Genesis 3
Where are you?
The serpent sows distrust: 'Has God really said…?' (3:1). The humans eat, are ashamed and hide. But God comes looking for them: 'Where are you?' (3:9). Since Irenaeus (2nd century) many Christians have read 3:15, the offspring of the woman who crushes the serpent's head, as a first announcement of the gospel; others read it more generally, as the struggle between humanity and evil.
God does not ask 'what have you done?' but 'where are you?'. What would you answer?
- Day 3Read Genesis 12
Abraham: go!
After the fall come murder, the flood and the tower of Babel (Genesis 4 to 11): things go from bad to worse. Then God begins again, with one man. Abram has to leave without knowing where to. The promise: land, descendants, and 'in you all the families of the earth will be blessed' (12:3). Straight after, Abram lies in Egypt: the bearer of the promise is no hero.
God begins his plan for 'all the families' with one imperfect man. What does that say about how God works?
- Day 4Read Genesis 22
God will provide
A hard chapter, and it is fine to feel it that way. Abraham is told to offer his son Isaac, and God stops him at the last moment. To Isaac's question Abraham says: 'God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering' (22:8). In Jewish thought this story is called the Akedah, 'the binding'. Early on, Christians saw in it a shadow of the Father who did not spare his own Son (Romans 8:32).
What does the name Abraham gives the place, 'The LORD will provide' (22:14), say about God?
- Day 5Read Exodus 3
A burning bush
Centuries later Abraham's descendants are slaves in Egypt. Scholars differ on when exactly the exodus took place: some think of the 15th century BC (based on 1 Kings 6:1), many of the 13th century, and some doubt an exodus on this scale. God says to Moses: 'I have surely seen the affliction of my people' (3:7). His name: 'I am who I am' (3:14).
God sees, hears and comes down (3:7–8). What does that mean for anyone who is stuck today?
- Day 6Read Exodus 12
The Passover
The last plague is the heaviest: the death of the firstborn. Whoever puts the blood of a lamb on the doorposts is passed over. Israel must remember this night every year (12:14), and Jews celebrate Pesach to this day. According to the gospels, Jesus' last meal was a Passover meal, and Paul writes: 'Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place' (1 Corinthians 5:7).
Why would God want his people to tell this night again every year, to the children too (12:26–27)?
- Day 7Read Exodus 14
Through the sea
Pharaoh's army is right behind Israel, the sea lies ahead. Moses says: 'The LORD will fight for you, and you shall be still' (14:14). The Hebrew speaks of the 'Sea of Reeds'; nobody knows for sure exactly where it was. Paul later sees the crossing as a picture of baptism (1 Corinthians 10:1–2): from slavery to freedom, through the water.
'You shall be still.' Where should you let God fight for you, instead of doing it yourself?
- Day 8Read Exodus 20
Ten words
At Mount Sinai God makes a covenant with his people. The ten commandments do not begin with an order, but with what God has already done: 'I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage' (20:2). First liberation, then the way to stay free. How the ten are counted differs between traditions. Jesus later sums them up in two: love God and your neighbour (Mark 12:29–31).
What changes when you read the commandments as an answer to liberation, and not as a condition?
- Day 9Read Leviticus 16
The great Day of Atonement
In the desert Israel builds a tent for God, the tabernacle. Once a year the high priest enters the most holy place. One goat is sacrificed, a second carries the sins into the desert: 'on this day shall atonement be made for you' (16:30). Jews still keep Yom Kippur, since AD 70 without a temple. The letter to the Hebrews (9) sees Jesus as the high priest who enters once and for all.
What does it say that God himself gives a way back, before anyone asks for it?
- Day 10Read Joshua 24
Choosing whom you serve
After forty years in the desert Israel enters the land under Joshua. Archaeologists and interpreters differ on how exactly that settlement went, and the war stories raise questions too. In his farewell Joshua tells the whole story again, from Abraham on (24:2–13). Then the choice: 'as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD' (24:15).
Joshua first tells what God did, and only then asks for a choice. What do you choose today?
- Day 11Read 1 Samuel 16
The youngest is anointed
After the time of the judges Israel wants a king, like the other nations (1 Samuel 8). Saul starts well but goes his own way. Samuel has to anoint a new king in Bethlehem, and it is not the strongest son but the youngest, a shepherd boy: 'man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart' (16:7). 'Anointed' is 'messiah' in Hebrew, 'christos' in Greek.
What would God see when He looks at your heart, beyond what others see?
- Day 12Read 2 Samuel 7
A house for David
David is king in Jerusalem and wants to build a house, a temple, for God. But God turns it around: I will build you a house, a royal house that lasts forever (7:16). From this promise grows the hope of a 'Son of David'. It echoes at the announcement of Jesus' birth: 'the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David' (Luke 1:32).
David wants to do something for God, and God first wants to do something for David. Do you recognise that?
- Day 13Read 1 Kings 18
Elijah on Carmel
After Solomon the kingdom splits in two: Israel in the north and Judah in the south (1 Kings 12). King Ahab and his wife Jezebel serve Baal. God sends prophets, people who call the nation back to the covenant. Elijah challenges the people: 'How long will you waver between two opinions?' (18:21). Later Malachi says Elijah will return, and Jesus sees that fulfilled in John the Baptist (Matthew 11:14).
Where are you wavering between two opinions?
- Day 14Read 2 Kings 25
Jerusalem falls
The northern kingdom had already been conquered by Assyria in 722 BC (2 Kings 17). Now Babylon destroys Jerusalem and the temple, in 587 or 586 BC (scholars differ on the year), and carries the people away. It looks like the end of the promises. Yet the book ends with a small light: King Jehoiachin is released and eats at the king's table (25:27–30). Clay tablets from Babylon mention his rations.
The book ends not with a solution but with a small sign. What are small signs of hope in your life?
- Day 15Read Jeremiah 31
A new covenant
Jeremiah lived through the fall of Jerusalem himself, and was mocked a lot for his message. In the middle of the grief (Rachel weeping for her children, 31:15) God speaks of a new covenant: 'I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart' (31:33). Jesus takes up the word at the last supper: 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood' (Luke 22:20).
What is the difference between a law on tablets of stone and a law in your heart?
- Day 16Read Ezekiel 37
Dry bones
Ezekiel is with the exiles in Babylon. They say: 'Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost' (37:11). God shows him a valley full of bones and asks: 'Can these bones live?' (37:3). The Hebrew word 'ruach' means breath, wind and Spirit at once. What God promises here comes back later on Easter morning and at Pentecost.
What in you or around you seems 'dried up'? Do you dare ask God to breathe into it?
- Day 17Read Isaiah 53
The suffering servant
A song about a servant of God who suffers for others: 'he was wounded for our transgressions' (53:5). Many scholars place Isaiah 40 to 55 in the time of the exile; others attribute the whole book to the prophet of the 8th century BC. The great Isaiah scroll from Qumran is older than Jesus. In Jewish thought the servant is often Israel itself; the New Testament reads the song about Jesus (Acts 8:32–35).
'All we like sheep have gone astray' (53:6). Where do you read yourself in this song?
- Day 18Read Ezra 3
Back, and weeping for joy
In 538 BC the Persian king Cyrus lets the exiles go back (Ezra 1); the Cyrus Cylinder also describes his policy of letting peoples return home. A small group rebuilds the altar and lays the foundation of a new temple. The young shout for joy, but the old, who had known the first temple, weep (3:12–13). It is a new beginning, but not yet what the prophets promised.
Do you know that, joy and sorrow at the same time? What do you do with it before God?
- Day 19Read Malachi 3
The waiting
Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament in our Bibles (the Jewish Bible ends with Chronicles). God promises: 'Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me' (3:1). Then it stays quiet for a long time: about four centuries, with the Greeks, the Maccabean revolt and, from 63 BC, the Romans. Mark opens his gospel with exactly this promise (Mark 1:2).
How do you keep going when God seems silent for a long time?
- Day 20Read Luke 2
A child in a manger
Under Emperor Augustus a child is born in Bethlehem, the city of David, and laid in a feeding trough. Shepherds hear it first. Jesus was probably born between 6 and 4 BC; how the census under Quirinius fits into that is a well-known question among scholars. In the temple Simeon takes the child in his arms: he had long been waiting for 'the consolation of Israel' (2:25). The waiting is over.
Simeon recognises in a baby what he had been waiting for. What do you expect from God?
- Day 21Read Luke 4
Fulfilled today
Jesus spends forty days in the desert, as Israel spent forty years, but He stays faithful where Israel fell. In the synagogue of Nazareth He reads Isaiah 61: good news for the poor, freedom for captives. Then He says: 'Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing' (4:21). His fellow villagers want to hear Him at first, and then push Him off a cliff.
Jesus came for the poor, the captives and the blind. Which of them do you belong to today?
- Day 22Read Matthew 5
The Sermon on the Mount
As Moses received the law on a mountain, Jesus speaks from a mountain. He begins with blessings for the poor, those who mourn and the meek. He says He did not come 'to destroy, but to fulfil' (5:17). And He goes further than the law: not only do not kill, but do not hate either; even 'love your enemies' (5:44).
Which beatitude touches you most today, and why?
- Day 23Read John 19
It is finished
In John, Jesus dies on the day of preparation for the Passover (19:14), the hour when the lambs were slaughtered; scholars think differently about how that relates to the other gospels. Above the cross, in three languages: 'Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews'. His last word: 'It is finished' (19:30). No bone is broken (19:36), as with the Passover lamb in Exodus 12:46.
What, in your view, was 'finished' on the cross?
- Day 24Read John 20
In the garden: Mary!
Early on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene stands weeping at the empty tomb, in a garden. She thinks Jesus is the gardener, until He says her name (20:16). A woman as first witness: in those days her testimony counted for less, and many scholars see precisely that as a sign that this was not made up. Thomas doubts and then says: 'My Lord and my God!' (20:28).
Jesus calls Mary by her name. What would it mean that He knows you by your name?
- Day 25Read Acts 2
Pentecost
Fifty days after Easter, at the Jewish harvest feast, the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples. People from many countries hear them speak in their own language. Many interpreters see here the reverse of Babel (Genesis 11): there the languages were confused, here people understand each other. Peter quotes the prophet Joel. That day about three thousand people are baptised (2:41).
The first church continued in the teaching, the fellowship, the bread and the prayers (2:42). Which of those four do you miss most?
- Day 26Read Acts 10
For all nations
Peter has a vision and is sent to the house of Cornelius, a Roman officer in Caesarea. For a Jew that meant walking into the home of a Gentile. Peter says: 'God is no respecter of persons' (10:34), and the Spirit comes on the Gentiles too. So the promise to Abraham takes shape: in him all the families of the earth are blessed (Genesis 12:3).
For whom would you have to step over a threshold, like Peter?
- Day 27Read Romans 8
Nothing can separate us
The letters are older than the gospels: Paul probably wrote to Rome around AD 57. Chapter 8 begins with 'There is therefore now no condemnation' (8:1). The whole creation groans and waits for freedom (8:22), and the Spirit prays with us when we have no words. It ends with the certainty that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ (8:38–39).
What would you dare if you knew for sure that nothing can separate you from God's love?
- Day 28Read Ephesians 2
A wall broken down
According to tradition Paul wrote this letter; many scholars think of a student who wrote in his name. 'By grace you have been saved through faith' (2:8). Christ has broken down 'the middle wall of partition' (2:14). In the temple there really was such a barrier: in 1871 an inscription was found that forbade non-Jews, on pain of death, to go any further.
Which walls between people do you see, and what would it mean that in Christ they have already fallen?
- Day 29Read Revelation 21
All things new
John is in exile on Patmos (1:9) and sees a new heaven and a new earth. God comes to live with people (21:3) and wipes away every tear (21:4). 'Behold, I make all things new' (21:5). The city is a cube (21:16), like the most holy place in the temple (1 Kings 6:20): the whole city is God's dwelling. Christians differ on how literally to read the images; the hope is the same.
Which tears would you want God to wipe away?
- Day 30Read Revelation 22
Back in the garden
The story began in a garden and ends in a garden city: the river of the water of life and the tree of life (22:2), which became out of reach in Genesis 3. 'There shall be no more curse' (22:3). The last word is an invitation: 'whoever will, let him take the water of life freely' (22:17), and a prayer: 'Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!' (22:20).
You have read the big story, from garden to garden city. Where do you stand in that story?