I've decided to go back to blogging. Internally, I suppose I feel I have something to say. I'm a preacher by trade, and so, understandably, I always seem to have something to say. Externally, I am never really sure if what I have to say is of any value to anyone else. As I read that previous sentence, I can't help but hear the voice of Stanley Hauerwas screeching in my ear: "People don't have values! Used cars have values!" Notwithstanding, people don't have to suffer to listen to anything I communicate. That's the reality of this late modern world, namely, that we have reduced everything to a choice. I can choose this or that. I can choose to suffer the preacher on Sunday or else make a very serious point to drown out all voices but my own.

All that being said, I have decided to go back to blogging. Maybe it is because I am so thoroughly a product of my generation that I desire to join in the cacophony of voices abounding over, under, and around us. Is that arrogance? Or perhaps it is simple wishful thinking that I could join in such a cloud of voices. Richard Lischer wrote a few years ago about coming to the "end of words," (in a book by the same name). He writes,

"Preachers continue to follow Jesus' example but in a culture that is suffering a certain exhaustion with words. Mass violence overrides the significance of language. The centralization of the means of communication only ensures that everyone thinks and talks roughly the same. The first causualty of the information age is truth. Passion and beauty have become expendable virtues." (Richard Lischer, The End of Words, William B. Eerdmen's Publishing: Grand Rapids, 2005).

I hope that I speak the truth. I hope that in this theologically watered-down age of narcissistic self-worship I do not waver from passion and beauty in my quest to be a truth teller. Indeed, is that not the sum of Christian ethics - to be truth tellers?

In summary, I am back to blogging. I cannot promise I will always be diligent in the work, but I suspect I will be truthful and full of charm and wit. I'll close this post, then, with a little bit of Charles Wesley.

Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go
My daily labor to pursue
Thee, only thee, resolved to know
In all I think or speak or do.

The task thy wisdom hath assigned
O let me cheerfully fulfill
In all my works thy presence find
And prove thy good and perfect will

Thee may I set at my right hand
Whose eyes mine inmost substance see
And labor on at thy command
And offer all my works to thee

For thee delightfully employ
Whate'er thy bounteous grace hath given
And run my course with even joy
And closely walk with thee to heaven