Yes We Are

I re-entered the blogosphere yesterday with a rather weak statement by asking the question Are we back? I wanted to emphasize the soft launch aspect and point out that we are not trying to restart all the spinning plates that were going before. I have updated the Our Daily Bread and Bible Gateway features in the left-hand sidebar. That only takes a couple of minutes and it’s a good routine for me to start the day with; I have been updating the verse of the day on the Unity Baptist Facebook page this whole time. Our Daily Bread now has a daily video devotional you can subscribe to, so check that out.

Speaking of Unity Baptist, that is one reason I have desired to start blogging here again. I was looking at the traffic for the church website and was concerned it was down, reasoning that traffic directed from this site must be missing. After careful analysis I’m not sure that was ever the case. In the first place there has been more visitor activity here than I expected considering nothing new had been posted for nearly three consecutive quarters. In the second place there was only a trickle of incoming to the church website from here last summer when this blog was active and that trickle continued during the down time. Apparently having the Unity Baptist RSS feed on the left side does not drive much traffic to the church site; but that feed has been running on autopilot this whole time and will continue.

The biggest driver of traffic – views and visitors – is activity. If you want to be read then you have to write. If you want to be seen then you have to show the audience something. This venue gives me the opportunity to express myself through writing, share the Gospel, reach people in places I will never visit in person and make/keep up with blog friends near and far. Some of my friends on Facebook I met here doing this. So let’s do this.

Are We Back?

Easter Sunday

So when The Master’s Table went on hiatus last fall I was hoping that would last a few weeks and we would resume business as usual. After a week or two of not having the stress of Happy Monday and Satur-deja Vu bearing on me, I had a little bit of guilt because of how good it felt. I would often stay up late on Sunday or more likely get up early on Monday morning to meet a self-imposed deadline. Discussing theology, responding to headlines and reviewing books is easy when you can pop out a post every now and then when there are things to write about i.e. stuff I need to get off my chest. Cranking out those e-zines twice a week became a grind and like I say, I felt a little guilty about how good it felt to not be under the pressure to produce those on a regular on-going basis.

I am returning to blogging. I’ve heard a couple of authors and been to a concert all in the last couple of months and while posting to Facebook is great I am still a fan of the long-form blog post. There are not as many fans as there used to be but I imagine I can find a few – maybe a few such folks have been wondering if/when I would post again. Maybe. I have definitely lost momentum, might have lost some followers, but we are going to crank the machine and see if it running it gets anyone’s attention. I hope to foster some discussion, write a post or two each week, I have a book I will start reading tomorrow and plan to review in the next two or three weeks. For the time being Happy Monday and Satur-deja Vu are more than I feel comfortable jumping back into. Maybe some day in some form or another.

Technical Difficulty

Happy Monday is experiencing technical difficulty. Please stand by.

Satur-deja Vu

Yeah, no – I guess if you live in the State of California where they have rolling blackouts during peak usage times this might be necessary. The last time they opened a nuclear power plant was 1985. The population increased from 26 to 39 million in the years since. If you live in Texas, 78 degrees inside would feel a lot better than the 105 degrees outside. I live in Georgia and 78 at 100% relative humidity is sweltering. Our temp setpoint is 72 degrees during the day and we turn it down to 71 at night. Don’t get me wrong, I love summer. I would rather sit inside with the AC on than sit inside during the winter with the heat on. I love baseball games, swim parties, grilling out and late sunsets. I would rather cut grass than shovel snow. Everything people claim to love about fall – hoodies, bonfires, pumpkin spice lattes, snuggling up in blankets – those are all just attempts to keep warm.

Happy Monday

Drink the coffee then do good. If you do anything else that’s on you.

This is Happy Monday #542.

Happy Monday

We realize of course that not every person drinks coffee. We don’t understand it, but realize it.

This is Happy Monday #541.

Satur-deja Vu

Not a recent pic – I visited the Ark Encounter back when it was relatively new in 2016. I took the picture above before the sun, wind and rain started working on the exterior. I wrote a post this week about making the mistake of reading the comments when I saw an ad placed by the Ark Encounter on Twitter. Back in 2016 I wrote about my visit to the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. There are links to albums full of pics on Facebook from both places. Reading that 2016 post reminded me that used to really write, not just post pics and links.

I Read the Comments

I don’t have a lot of interaction with Twitter but I am on it and sometimes scroll through the feed of people and pages that I follow. There was an ad from the Ark Encounter, linking to an article about which type of cubit Noah used (a royal cubit is a little bit longer than what we typically think of as a cubit, around 20 or 21 inches). I made the mistakes of reading the comments. However you feel about a global flood or Old Testament historical accounts aside; there were hundreds of comments about how it doesn’t matter what he used because there was never an ark/never a global flood/the ark should have been a box not a boat/foolish Christians that believe in fairytale stories and such like. There was not one defender of the faith or Christian apologist in the multitude.

Happy Monday

This is Happy Monday #540.

Satur-deja Vu

Might have to read it twice – maybe three times. In the last series before the All Star break the Atlanta Braves with a record of 59-27 scored 2 runs while Tampa Bay, with a record of 57-34, scored 1. Not sure about ACLS but someone was obviously very excited (and maybe a little inebriated).