This year I am listening to the Daily Audio Bible podcast each day with the goal of listening to the entire Bible by the end of December. I read through the Bible in a year while in college, but I always seemed to get behind and had to catch up at some point in the year. Listening to the Bible has erased this problem for me because I can always listen as I am brushing my teeth in the morning or cooking my supper or doing my dishes! Listening to Brian read from the Old and New Testaments, Psalms and Proverbs on the Daily Audio Bible is actually one of my favorite parts of the day. It is so interesting to see how the different readings link together, illuminating each other and the larger story God is telling throughout His word – a story I am apart of.

Today I was struck by the relationship between Matthew 26:47-68 and Psalms 32:1-11. In Matthew 26 Jesus is betrayed and arrested, sent to trial before Caiaphas the high priest and then beaten and mocked. It is a sobering set of verses. Psalm 32 begins with David exclaiming, “How blessed is he whose transgressions is forgiven, Whose sin is covered!” It is only because of the suffering and death of Jesus, which is just beginning at this point in Matthew, that I can make this statement with David and experience this blessing. What a profound, humbling and impacting truth it is! Saying I am thankful for this truth doesn’t even begin to adequately convey the depth and intensity of my thoughts and feelings to this reality in my own life.

“For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” ~ Hebrews 9:13-14