UPDATE: For reasons of copyrights and permissions, and to obey such laws as they are given to us in the civil realm, I have discontinued the calendar for the Daily Lectionary. I apologize for the inconvenience, especially if you have been following the calendar this year.
It is my hope that Concordia Publishing House will make such a devotional resource available for everyone within the near future, and if I know of any, I will certainly point readers in that direction. Please continue to read my site regularly or subscribe to the site’s RSS feed to be notified.
Blessings on your devotional reading this year; I hope you will use the opportunity to discuss and confer with others as you walk through the Word.
–
One of the aspects of my life that I haven’t really used effectively on this Web site is the spiritual (ahem - Lutheran) side of my life. This is a shame, as it’s pretty much the most important facet of who I am and explains a lot about me.
If you’re like me, it can be quite difficult to get into a groove with daily devotional reading. I know that I too often make excuses for why I haven’t been reading, or why I haven’t been studying Scripture or the fathers or “old lutherans,” as it were. Indeed, my theological library mostly lies in the basement in boxes, unread since I graduated from the seminary almost three years ago.
For those who are so inclined, I have created a Google Calendar for the Daily Lectionary as found in Lutheran Service Book. I am attempting to stay at least one month ahead of the current date at all times, and I’m hoping I haven’t made any mistakes in data entry (it’s a lof of information). You can access this calendar through Google Calendar by clicking on this button:
Doing so will open up the calendar, and you should be able to add it to your list without too much trouble. Once you’ve done this, I suggest giving it a suitable color to differentiate it from the other calendars in your account, so you more easily and readily pay attention to it.
Read on for more.
The calendar is structured in such a way that the appointments themselves have names that give you the Old Testament and New Testament readings, and any optional readings that are available. In addition, in the description field of the appointment, the readings are again given, along with clickable links to take you to the appropriate Scripture citation at the esv.org Web site. (As mentioned before: hopefully with as few errors as possible). Unfortunately—I’ve already tested it—these links are unclickable on an iPhone or iPod; they show up as plain-text only.
I’m sure you understand that, for reasons of copyright, I will not be reproducing the texts in the calendar entries, only pointing people to the correct citations. And yes, I’m going to use ESV, as it’s generally agreed upon (or supposed to have been) in the LCMS, is a pretty faithful translation and nice update to the RSV, and I personally like it a lot.
I plan on creating this every year for as long as I can keep it up. It’s unfortunately not a fire-and-forget sort of a thing, as the movable dates in the calendar ensure that each year will be different and will have slightly different combinations of readings. The table of Psalms is not in this calendar - I may add it later in the year, or I may come back to it next year and see what I can do.
Note that you can also “subscribe” to this calendar using iCal or Outlook. I will be providing instructions and screenshots on how to do this in the coming weeks.
I’m also going to create a page here in the next few days that will have expanded information on this calendar, what to expect, and the kinds of things others can do in order to assist with the calendar or to provide additional content for the calendar. I would encourage as many people as possible to travel with me through the Daily Lectionary, and I especially invite other bloggers to not only read along and ruminate on their own, but also to utilize trackbacks and pingbacks to posts I will attempt to write on a daily basis, so that we have a central place in which to collate our thoughts on the Daily Lectionary.
I’ll have more on those grandiose plans in the near future as we approach Ash Wednesday, when the Daily Lectionary plan begins.
As for now, I’ve gone ahead and started the ball rolling on a tool you can use for your daily devotional reading. Now, it’s up to you to use it as you see fit.
(Oh, and I also am the creator of both the Feasts and Festivals and the Commemorations calendars on Google Calendar, both of which have been shared as public for some months now. I hope some of you are using them, and I hope to add some relevant readings or citations to them in the future.)