‘I finished it!’: Patricia Heaton celebrates reading entire Bible for the first time in her life
Emmy Award-winning actress and "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Patricia Heaton shared with her fans that it was "revelatory" reading the entire Bible this year. "I finished it today," she said in excitement.
In a video shared on Twitter, Heaton said she followed an annual Bible reading plan from The Gospel Coalition. She showed two partially torn papers with coffee-cup stains, which she checked off daily as she finished chapter after chapter.
"Some days were just revelatory. I saw things I'd never seen before," said the Hollywood actress, who does not shy away from talking publicly about Jesus. "And some days were kind of a slog … especially the Old Testament."
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On the back of those pages, she also wrote all the names of God in the Bible.
"He's a Provider, Healer, Righteousness, Sovereign, the Most High, Good Shepherd, Prince of Peace, Lion of Judah," she said.
"It's a great way to start your day," she told her followers, encouraging them to set aside time each day for Bible reading and prayer.
She admitted there were times she didn't "do it for a few days" and had to do a "big catch-up."
"It was best to just, every day, set that time aside to meditate on it and pray," she said.
Heaton said she would start again with a new plan in the new year.
Raised an Irish Catholic, the actress told The Christian Post last year she is bold about Christ because of a statement she once heard.
"There's a saying, 'Jesus died for us publicly. So don't live for Him privately,'" she said. "But I also think you have to talk about why you can love in difficult circumstances. Now, it's because He first loved us. While we were still in our sin, He died for us."
Now 64 years old, Heaton is a longtime ambassador of the Christian humanitarian charity World Vision, which works in almost 100 countries and is considered the largest Christian international non-governmental organization.
Heaton released a book last year titled Your Second Act, where she encourages readers to live life to the fullest regardless of their age.
Heaton credited World Vision for trying to combat all the difficulties in the world, such as poverty, lack of clean water and even early child marriage.
"We are successfully combating a lot of those things, and World Vision is a big part of all of that," she told CP. "I really did my research with World Vision. They are such a transparent organization where 86 cents of every dollar goes directly to [the] program so that when you're giving money, you know it's really being used for programs that are lifting people out of poverty, not necessarily some big salaries. People who work for World Vision are living very sacrificial lives."
