A Place of Healing: Free Download of First Hour Narration

The first one hour narration of A Place of Healing by Joni Eareckson Tada is available as a free audio download until July 31 at Christianaudio.com. The audio is part of a new book soon to be released by the author both as a print edition and an audiobook, with the full title A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God's Sovereignty.

The author met with an accident years ago that left her a quadriplegic. Today, she continues to struggle with physical pain and suffering. Despite these struggles, she has ministered to people as an advocate and an author. You can learn more about her work at www.joniandfriends.org as well as from her Facebook page.

You can also get a free copy of the interview of the author by Christianaudio.com. And finally, you can pre-order the whole audiobook if you've benefited from the first hour download for only $2.98, also from Christianaudio.com.

The Lazy Bible Reader Reading Plan

Yesterday was supposed to be the start of the 4th week, and consequently the end of the 3rd week, of the 9-week Bible reading plan that I had been trying to follow, as I discussed here. Right now, I am exactly two weeks late from the schedule!

So I guess I better stick with a commitment that I have a better chance of accomplishing, before I think of graduating to something more structured. Or I just might not need to.

So drumroll please...

To read at least a chapter a day (or a portion thereof - give me a break, some portions would require closer and slower reading ). That should take me through the New Testament in about 8 months, and the entire Bible in about 3 years.

Let's see how this turns out.

The Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)

Lately I've been doing some online research on other Bible versions that I can use as an alternative to the usual KJV and NIV. The research has been interesting, sometimes disturbing, and I hope to talk about it in a future post. But for now, I would be focusing on my newest find, the Holman Christian Standard Bible or HCSB.

The HCSB has been around for quite some time, appearing as early as 1999 for its New Testament. But it's not really known to many people I suppose. I, for one, only found out about it very recently. Probably because it has not been that widely advertised or talked about, or it could be for some other reasons that I didn't really found out even during my online research. What I noticed though is the seemingly minimal amount of negative reviews, especially when it comes to the manner of translation and general content, as well as the lack of controversy surrounding the people who produced it (more about that in future posts). So, so far so good.

I don't know exactly how I did it, but I eventually ended up on this website of B&H Publishing that offers for free a complete HCSB download that also comes with a Bible reader that indexes the entire Bible book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. I decided to try using it in conjunction with the start of a 9-week Bible reading plan (see previous post). You can find the HCSB download as the last item in the Downloads section at the left side of the page.

I have to say I enjoyed it so much that I am actually using HCSB as my main Bible version now. The English is quite understandable, and the parenthetical aids are really useful and not too overwhelming. I have yet to check a local christian bookstore and hopefully get a printed one as well.

For additional discussions on the HCSB, you may check out this site that I just found out through a Google search.