I love “Reading through the Bible in a Year” plans. But I don’t do them, cuz I never finish them, and that makes me feel guilty. And honestly, I have enough things to feel guilty about already; my internal critic is pretty healthy.

What I do instead is read the Psalms, not for a year but for a lifetime, one month at a time. I’ve missed more days than I can count, but this plan has grace and fresh starts built into it.

Here’s how I got started, and how you can do it too.

Years ago, at the very beginning of my time in ministry, I read an article by Eugene Peterson where he talked about his devotional practices. He talked about the importance of reading psalms, how the book of Psalms teaches us the language of prayer and tunes our hearts to talk & listen to God. That article had a huge impact on me.

Today, after forty years of ministry, what he said makes even more sense. Because of Peterson, reading and praying psalms has been the center of my devotional life since then.

Now: when I read the article (1987?), Peterson was reading huge chunks of the book of Psalms every day. If I recall correctly, he was reading fifty psalms EVERY DAY, six days a week. (He was reading the entire book of Psalms twice a week!) To be honest, that sounded like a lot more than I could do.

So I struck on a plan that I have followed for the past forty years. I haven’t followed it every day, but the great thing about this plan is that it’s really easy to slip back in to, no matter how many days (or weeks, honestly) I have skipped.

The book of Psalms has 150 individual psalms, 150 individual prayers. Most months have at least 30 days. So I divide 150 by 30, which = 5 psalms for each day.

On the first day of the month, I read Psalm 1, 31, 61, 91, and 121. Start with the date and just add 30. So each month, if I read each day, I will read/pray the entire book of Psalms once.

(And over a lifetime, even if I don’t read each day, I will read the entire book of Psalms multiple times.)

On the 2nd, I read Psalm 2, 32, 62, 92, and 122.

And on the 3rd, Psalm 3, 33, 63, 93, and 123.

And so on. And start over on the 1st of the next month.

And if I have skipped a day or a week or whatever, whenever I am able to get back to it, I simply start back on that calendar date. If it’s the 21st, then Psalm 21, 51, 81, 111, 141.

What do I do with Psalm 119, that 176 verse behemoth? Sometimes I divide it up into 22 little psalmlets and read them on days 1-22. Sometimes I skip it and come back to it on the 31st. Sometimes I just read it on the 29th of the month, as scheduled.

And I always couple reading Psalms with reading a chapter from Proverbs, which has 31 chapters, so on the 31st of the months that have 31 days, I may just read Proverbs.

I’m always amazed how the Psalms “talk to each other” across the calendar. But that’s another post.