Ten minutes

Longer in the Word

A whole passage rather than a verse, with what it is answering, read slowly. Nothing is timed.

Today

The man who came at night

Nicodemus is a Pharisee and a member of the ruling council, and he comes to Jesus after dark. John says so twice, here and later. A respected religious teacher arrives privately, at night, with a compliment and a question, and the conversation goes somewhere he did not expect. The most quoted verse in the Bible sits inside this exchange rather than on its own.

Read at your own pace

Other passages

The whole of Psalm 23Read it twice. The second time, notice where the psalm stops describing God and starts speaking to him.
A song for the roadRead it aloud if you can. It was written to be sung on a road, not read in a chair.
Shelter, and what it does not promiseRead slowly, and notice how many different images of shelter the psalm reaches for. It keeps trying to say one thing.
Where the Psalms beginSix verses. Read them, then sit for a moment with the two pictures before you read them again.
Not a wedding readingRead the middle section slowly, and read it as a description of what you are like rather than of what you want from someone else.