Here I sit, hands poised over the keyboard, facing a blank new document with an equally blank mind, with nothing to say. It’s a frightening experience for anyone who writes with a deadline looming. A book, a news article, a sermon, a blog; it doesn’t matter what; if it’s due and no words are coming forth, it’s scary.

Of course, since no one is paying me to blog, and since no one’s life or safety or livelihood depends on it, I could just skip it for a week or two. Except.

Except that the purpose of my blog is to reveal the Creator’s work in the life of this all-too-ordinary and fallible man.There is, in a sense, an urgency to complete this weekly task. Perhaps this week, my Creator has something to say to you.

In a very real way, each one of us is facing a blank page as we hang up the 2023 calendar, with twelve fresh new months stacked up on the wall. How will we fill three hundred sixty-five empty boxes?

Back in my working days, I used a daily planner to schedule meetings and trips, and to record what happened; how many miles I drove, and what expenses I incurred. It was always interesting to look back and see how I spent my time and what was accomplished during the previous twelve months.

These days, I can look back at more than fifty Friday blog posts in 2022. Some were brief accounts of something that happened in the previous week. Others were old sermons of mine, that I edited for length or clarity. A few were hastily hammered out only moments before my self-imposed deadline of 12:15 PM. The curious thing is that every post received some “likes”, and the number of “likes” was not always proportional to the effort I put in or the profundity of the content or the length of the post. More important though were the comments you made.

“Amen!”

“Too funny!” “That was hilarious!”

“Well said” (Or from England, “Well done!”)

“This is just what I needed to hear today”

Thank you all!

So I have two requests of you my precious readers:

1. Please keep the comments coming, and keep them honest. I don’t need praise, I desire feedback.
2. Please, if you find a post interesting or amusing or even close to profound, please share it with someone.

You and I have this great blank page in front of us. What will we do with it? Among those bloggers I follow, I look forward to furthering my knowledge of the flora and fauna of South Africa. I want to read more poems and history lessons. Please, more stories and humor. Let me hear about faith and healing; let me see more photos of people and places.

And don’t fret too much about what you should write on your blank page. You and I are part of a great story by the Author of all of history, past, present, and future.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Psalms 139:16 (ESV)