Reading with a Pencil

While, of course, we read with our eyes and think with our brains, I’ve come to learn that reading with a pencil is of great help to me.

I had never spent a lot of time with 1 Corinthians and had really wanted to get to know it better. So, I took out my English Bible and a pencil and began to underline and box conjunctions that signalled the flow of the text. It engaged my brain in a way that I don’t always engage when I’m reading and it kept me from zoning out. Days later I found that I remembered more about my study through 1 Corinthians than a lot of other reading I had done elsewhere. The same trend has continued in other sections of the Bible, not to mention my academic reading as well.

If you’re not in the habit of it, give it a try! There are no rules to this but you will probably develop your own approach as you go.