Waxing Theological

As I spend time on vacation in Pennsylvania visiting with family and just generally letting life catch up with me for a bit, it dawned on me that I have seriously  neglected this blog.  To those who have/had been following sermons and other musings that I had been posting on here, I offer my apologies - it turns out that there was a sermon I had been in the process of posting and it never made it past a draft stage. Life has a tendency of happening, and things sometimes slip through the cracks - I wouldn't trade much of it for a few extra blog posts having shown up on here, but I aim to get back into the practice. Thanks for still being around, folks.

Remember when I said that thing early in my blog about consistency? Yeah... about that. Seeing as I have had nothing posted here since September , I'm obviously more than a "bit behind" on updating this blog. However, I'm hoping to fix that - it'll mean a LOT of posting, so I'll try to space it out somewhat to keep it from being overwhelming. Sorry for the lapse - hopefully I can get back into the routine again! -Joel

Just a brief intro before I post the next sermon - during this season of Lent, I'm trying something different.  For the first time ever, I'm taking advantage of a pattern in the lectionary readings and launching into a sermon series I've titled "Close Encounters of the Christ Kind."  As we journey together through Lent, the Scriptures present us with a number of "close encounters" between Jesus and various individuals - Satan in the wilderness, Nicodemus in the moonlight, the woman at the well, the blind man at Siloam, and Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, at Lazarus' grave.  In each of these "close encounters," Jesus not only does some truly amazing things, but also shows the depth of God's love for each and every one of us. In addition to the idea of doing a sermon series in the first place, I'll be attempting a different approach to the sermon itself throughout this series.  This idea actually started as a seed planted...

As I think I said in my introductory post - I've never been very good at this blogging thing.  Every so often, I get this crazy notion in my head that I should start a blog.  I make a bunch of posts, get distracted after a bit, and then it just sits.  I did the same thing with journals.  I'd get a fancy journal, think "this is going to record the adventure that is my life," and fill the first five-ten pages.  Ten pages of musing, then 90 pages of things that never were written. This is one thing I did not  inherit from my grandmother - for probably something close to 75 years of her life, she kept a daily diary and you could look back and know exactly what she'd had for dinner, what the weather had been like, what had happened during the day, the relationships she had, the people in her life --- her diaries were a detailed record of her life, times, and what was important to her.  Somewhere in our family right now, there are several boxes  full ...

Before I go into my musings, since this is a first post and all, I just wanted to give a quick "welcome" to anybody who happens to stumble upon this blog, whether through the church, through my own sharing on my profile, or however you've found this.  I've tried a few different blogs through the years, but none of them have ever "stuck," so to speak.  I'll try to post here as inspiration hits and put some thoughts out there every now and then, and there's no guarantees what any post might be about.  One thing I'm thinking of doing is putting my sermon each Sunday up here (after it's been preached, of course).  Sometimes, it'll be something out of scripture that catches my muse, other times it'll be a quick story, or sometimes there might be something specifically dealing with current events and things in the news and media.  Sometimes, it might even be something like a recipe or a book review.  Or I might post a video or two here and ...