Why blog?

Today I saw an internet ad while checking my office email. It was from TypePad, a blogging/web platform, put out there in Google AdSense. It read:

We aren’t gossiping
We’re blogging!
Anything juicy you want to share?

How ridiculous is that? Here is one of the largest blogging platforms out there essentially clamoring to the stereotype — that blogging is just words about nothing, just like gossip is a total waste of time (and unhelpful, hurtful, etc.).

Which led me to ponder as I drove home, Why blog?

Kari can extol the virtues of what writing in general, and blogging specifically, means to her. My wonderful wife sometimes does not even know exactly what she thinks about an every day issue until she writes. And what appears out on her site is a fraction of her writing in daily life. She is always weaving a healthy web of words, reflecting, rejoicing, re-wording, and simply thinking away. Actually, her style is more “free” — just sit down and crank away. Thankfully she types as fast as any person I’ve ever met (Cortez Peters, anyone?) – on a miniature keyboard at that. Wish I could communicate half as well as she can, in written and spoken word.

Me? Well, blogging is an outlet for short snippets of thought. Quotes, reflections, some humor (always borrowed), a tad of creativity (again, borrowed) and always connected to Christ, to His Gospel, the church, and to culture (people). Politics are not the savior of our world, so I don’t meddle in that arena here. I watch very little TV (but like friends who actually own one, so I can come over and watch college football!), and read many books albeit slowly. Words and thoughts and ideas matter. Sometimes they seem to matter enough to share. As a pastor I will continue to blog, probably much less frequently, but intentionally, for some of the reasons outlined on the DG Blog.

I hope to see everything through the Gospel (as a lens), and by the Gospel (as the engine for living). By it I realize I live and breath and work from significance in Christ, not for it.

I don’t entertain any thoughts that I’ll be published any day, so this is the closest I’ll ever come. Never will reach ‘elite’ status, but since words matter (and people matter too), and not many people are out there saying anything substantial, I will toss mine out there. Without substantial truth, derived for the self-revealing Triune God Creator Redeemer, we will have tiny, insignifant lives. With Him, our tiny pebble makes a ripple, many ripples, effecting a sphere far wider than our little pond would seem.

So, my great ambition in writing is that people look past me. That’s the juicy thing I want to share. Walk away from here with Jesus. I aim that others see Jesus, and His infinite worth, work and ways.

Yeah, I blog because of Him. (2 Cor. 5:9)