A week out and a 10 year blog accounting

 

A week out and I am adjusting to my new schedule.  Part of my routine is a morning walk, about 5 miles around the perimeter of the park in the early hours.  The picture above is a memorial pond which gave me a pause this morning with its reflection of the sunrise and landscape.  The walks help me in so many ways.  Not only do I need them physically but mentally.  

I have an old walkman type cassette player with a radio that I tune to Moody Radio and listen to the Kurt and Kate morning show.  News, weather, chit-chat and music fill my ears but what I key in on is the music.  I multi-task so much that music just becomes background noise to help me focus on the task before me.  It has been awhile since I have listened to a song solely to hear it for its own worth.  

I pull out an ear bud when a fellow walker approaches so I can say "good morning" and some of the faces are becoming familiar to me.  It is a good way to start these days of waiting.  Praying for a future assignment, family members, and my new friends back in Machias fill my mind each turn down another street of Betmar as I make the big circle back to "home base."  I guess I am still multi-tasking because I usually have a list of things to attempt to accomplish before hitting the steps of our beloved "tiny house."

Let me share with you something I learned this week from my online masters class.  It seems odd to have extra time to devote to study without a sermon lurking in the back of my mind.  Theological terms help us to teach about God and His redemptive plan.  Those theological terms need definitions and those definitions must be based on Biblical support.  What happens when two Christians are using the same terms but they have different definitions and what if one or both of those definitions haven't been thoroughly vetted by the Scriptures?  The two Christians can be talking two different languages because they are using different definitions but speaking the same terms.  The terms we use need definitions that we explain from the Scripture before going forward.  We might find more common ground after we have taken the time to define the terms we are using.  Maybe, as Dr. Tim Sansbury states, "And so even if they take different words to describe that one reality, it's still that one reality that they're aimed at."  Maybe we are aimed at the same thing but haven't taken the time to ask the other how they are defining the terms they are using and from what passages do they build that definition.  Does this all sound deep?  I'm glad I have the extra time for this class.

Lastly, I blew past the 10 year anniversary of this blog in December 2020.  I have been tending it for a decade.  My first post was Christmas Day, 2010.  Here is the link to that post:  https://pastorwolfgang.blogspot.com/2010/12/start-of-new-habit.html 

Here are some stats:

Overall views:  almost 60,000

Overall posts:  including this one, 1,833

Most posts in a year:  320 - 2018

Fewest posts in a year:  79 - 2020

Most views of any post:  216 

To those who read these thoughts of mine, I am humbled for you giving some of your time to read what I write.  I am still just "a simple man serving a great God" as my profile states but I am thankful for all the experiences and people God puts in my path.  You are some of those people.

Adam