I am not sure why I am finding it so difficult to blog these days. When I look back at when I first started in 2007, I had 279 posts that year. In 2012 I had 19 posts. This will be my first for 2013. I think the difference is Facebook, in that I tend to just put a statement there instead of paragraphs here. But Facebook also is a time consumer and I spend much too much time reading posts, articles and playing games which takes away my time from reading other sources, which is usually where I would get my thoughts for blogging. Seems like a lot of my posts are thoughts I have about what someone else has written or said.
That being said, the other day I found a quote on blogging and put it on my Facebook and mentioned me blogging and a few people encouraged me to to blog again. Then I logged on to find that Blogger had changed a few things and a new feature (or just one I had not seen before) was the ability to see who was looking at your blog and to say that I was shocked is an understatement! Yesterday 5 people viewed something on my blog, last month 253 and since I started my blog 22,602 from 10 countries with France running the most after the US. I thought that was really interesting and it motivated me to try to once again write with the hopes that perhaps some wondering soul would find something that would help them to see how awesome God is and how much He loves them. After all, if He cares about someone like me, He absolutely cares about you as well.
Honestly though, I think it is the quote I referred to earlier that actually motivated me to get back to trying to blog. When I read some of my pasts posts they predominately are about some spiritual aspect of my life. Some way that I am struggling to see God more clearly. Consequently, I think I was closer to God during those days, as I was spending more time with Him. So let me tell you about the quote by Anne Voskamp and how it motivated me to blog again.
"The blog is meant to be a bit of a side chapel — a place to slip into and still and encounter the glory of God — and come away again with a fresh sense that your life, right where you are, is a holy experience — that God dwells with you and in you, and where you are is holy ground, worthy of reverence and celebration and wonder. That little burning bush that is the signature of the blog — it echoes Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s words:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware."
So even if no one sees this page but me, I want to write about my Holy encounters with God. But even more I want to have Holy encounters with my God. I want to spend more time with Him. In order for that to happen, I need to have better control over the time eaters in my life. I need to tell myself that I desire the time with God more than anything else. Not just a short devotional or prayer time, but quality relationship time. From the beginning I had tagged my blog "Trying to see God doing Ephesians 3:20 things in my life (more than I can ask or imagine). There have been some great Ephesians 3:20 moments, but I think I would like to change my tag to Me and God: Our Holy Encounters. I want to be the one who takes off my shoes and not the one who plucks blackberries and daubs my face unaware.
