Where to start reading when you do not know where to look

A place to find one passage worth reading, at the moment you need one.

Every passage arrives with three things around it. The verses on either side, so you can see what was being said and to whom. A short note on why it may sit close to what you described. And one question to sit with, if you want one.

The passages come from the World English Bible. Cal Hewitt writes the site. He went to Catholic school through eighth grade, spent a year at a Jesuit university and once thought seriously about the seminary, which is where a long familiarity with the book comes from, and he spent two decades before this as a business analyst working out what people actually needed rather than what they first asked for. He is not a pastor, a theologian or a scholar, and the site does not rest on his authority: it rests on the passage, the context printed with it, and a written record of why that passage was chosen and what was set aside.

The experiences people actually arrive with.

• Anxiety, a mind that will not settle.
• Grief, the early weeks, and the years after.
• Doubt, questions you cannot ask out loud where you are.
• Hope, nothing to point at that suggests it changes.
• Loneliness, on your own, or unknown among people.
• Fear, something ahead of you with a shape and a date.
• Burnout, carrying it too long, and still going.
• Emotional exhaustion, not tired in the body. Emptied out.
• Caring for someone, love that has become logistics.
• Not sleeping, awake at three, again.
• Waiting, praying about the same thing for months.
• Guilt and regret, something you would take back.
• Peace, wanting things to be still, and they are not.

Because a verse on its own leaves out who was being spoken to.

James 1:5 is often quoted as a promise about wisdom. It was written to people already in the middle of trials, which is a different sentence to be handed on a hard night. Romans 15:13 reads like a blessing, and it is the closing line of a long appeal to a divided group of people to put up with each other.

So, the paragraph comes with the line, every time.

Free, and there is no account.

What you type is used to find a passage and then it is gone. If you save one, it stays in your own browser. Some pages will point to books by people who have spent their lives on this, and a few of those links will earn Bible Nudge a small amount.