This is my 1000th post. I haven’t noted previous milestones, but 1000 is just such a resonant round number, I couldn’t let it pass unremarked. Considering that from October 2003 through December 2006 I only posted 30 times, no one would have been likely to predict I’d hit this one (not that anyone would have cared enough to consider the question); 2007 was a busier year, but even then I only put up 65 posts. In January of last year, though, I was inspired to take blogging seriously as a discipline, and that changed things; in the 16 months from my first post that year until now, I’ve put up 905 pieces, or about 56 per month. Of course, a lot of those have been minor—video posts, song lyrics, quotes—but there’s been a fair bit of serious material, too; this blog is still small potatoes as these things go (actually, fingerlings would be more to the point), but there are folks who read on some kind of regular basis, too, and I appreciate all of you.
I was ruminating a bit the other day over some of the hits and misses I’ve had, and my mind got stuck a little on my 2006 post on Barack Obama, in which I praised his speech on religion in the public square. That was the point at which he really stuck in my mind as a likely presidential candidate, though I didn’t think he’d be ready for the office in 2008 (and 100 days into his administration, I still don’t). In retrospect, I think I gave him more credit for that speech than he had coming, but if I heard more what I wanted to hear than what he was actually committed to, I don’t blame myself too much for that, since he has a gift for eliciting that sort of response. Given how many pro-life evangelicals managed to convince themselves that he deserved their support, I think I did a pretty decent job of staying objective; I suspect the biggest fallout for the pro-life cause from the Obama presidency will be the number of evangelicals who, when they really face the cognitive dissonance between their convictions and their vote, sacrifice the former to justify the latter to themselves and others, and end up coming out in support of abortion. I hope there won’t be too many, but I don’t think they’ll be isolated cases, either.
Anyway, I’m enjoying the ride, and whether it does anyone else any good or not, I think this blog is helping me grow as a thinker and writer, and I even think it’s helped my preaching; and I do hope it provides some benefit to those of you who are regular visitors, and to the various folks who drop by for one thing and another. Onward and upward.