Preacher, Cook, Blog

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Psalm 143:8

Good News Translation (GNT)

⁸ Remind me each morning of your constant love,
    for I put my trust in you.
My prayers go up to you;
    show me the way I should go.

I sat in the large congregation of people celebrating the life of Dr. Harold Fagal. As they told of how he had let his witness be known, first as a pastor and later as a professor, I decided that I should write down my thoughts about God and put them somewhere where others could read about them if they wanted to.

I created a file on my computer called simply Devotions, and my first entry was on January 26, 2011. I continued filing my thoughts and turning over and over in my mind how I might place them where others could see them if they chose to. People had spoken about blogs and how they could find things on a blog. I had no clue what a blog was, but that weird word stuck in my head.

Then I purchased the video Julie & Julia simply because my daughter’s name is Julia (and definitely not Julie). In the movie Julie created a blog where she entered her experiences of cooking each of the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The blog gained lots of readers. Julie then published these blogs in a book. Julia Child was livid with anger; she felt that Julie was simply using her name to make money. I said to myself that if Julie could make a blog, so could I.

Between Julie and my own nagging head, I started to investigate blogs. I found there were lots of public blogs. Many of them cost a monthly fee, which I was not about to pay. Some of them were free, and Blogspot seemed to be a leader in the free group.

So on November 8, 2013, I posted my first blog, entitled Speaking Well, about a young soldier on duty in Germany who spoke the most abominable English I had ever heard but loved me into reconsidering Christianity after I had completely given up on it. I ended that blog with the prayer “Thank You, Lord, for your love that flowed through this soldier to me. May Your love flow through me to others!”

For seven years now I have written hundreds of devotions, and for well over five years I have posted some of them. I tend to be technologically challenged, and it still takes me a half hour or more to post a single blog, not counting the hour or two it takes me to think about it and write it down. I see that last year I only posted 13, about once a month! I can do better than that.

Father in Heaven, You remind me each morning of Your love for me; help me to express my appreciation to You more frequently.

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[i]Harold  Fagal http://ak-cache.legacy.net//legacy/images/cobrands/PE/photos/mugs-513521mg_20110109.jpgx?w=200&h=200&option=3&fc=fff

[ii] Julia Child http://cook.fnr.sndimg.com/content/dam/images/cook/editorial/blog/legacy/devour/2010/8/Julia-Child-The-French-Chef-588.jpg.rend.hgtvcom.616.462.suffix/1505357138862.jpeg