Happy Birthday!

Hillschurch Blog turns one today.

A year ago I started this blog.

Reflections?

It's a challenge to blog regularly and also to be honest about the things I am going through. It is much easier to just find things that are interesting and report on them and link to them. Actually interacting with the world and allowing it to affect me and then report on that impact is much more difficult.

I remember the experience of first going to work with street youth at Church on the Street and Yonge Street Mission's Evergreen. I remember preaching "from a distance." What I mean by that is that it was easy to find scriptural truths and present them during sermons. It was much harder to find ways that that scripture had made a personal impact on my life and to show how I was currently living it out. The failures had as much (if not more) impact than the successes. I learned that I needed to let the scriptures live and speak through me. That means that before they came out of my mouth they needed to travel through my heart.

The same is true of blogging. It is much easier to report little nuggets of truth or interest or even of aggravation than it is to let that information pass through my heart and mind and conscience first and then reveal how it affected me. I made a commitment back then not to preach without living (or trying to live) what I was speaking. I realize that that commitment needs to extend to all of life. Don't say stuff you don't mean. Don't teach what you're not living. Don't distance yourself from life. Engage all of life - the pain as well as the joy. Don't play it so safe. Carpe Diem! (Seize the day!)

It's your birthday - live a little!