James’s Blog: The End.

James’s Blog: The End.

So this is it – my final blog post after five years. I don’t know when (or if) I’ll be back, but I’ll be taking the rest of 2020 off at least. We’ll see what happens, eh.

There’s not going to be any profound words of wisdom in this post, no poem or parable. It’s just going to be me saying “Thank you” to everyone who’s taken the time to read what I’ve written, even if it’s only been once. Thank you if you took the time to comment on anything I posted. Thank you if you ever shared anything I’d written with someone else, digitally or not. Thank you for being a part of this particular leg of my journey.

I hope that something I’ve written over the past five years has been personally encouraging or challenging in some way. In short, I hope that neither of us has wasted our time.

There have been some exceptions, but on the whole I have been happy with everything that has appeared on these pages. The ones that haven’t been very good have invariably been so because the well of ideas had run dry for that week, despite me having committed to posting something regardless – but there have been a fair number of posts that I’ve pulled out of thin air at the last moment that have ended up being much better than they had any right to be. Of everything that I’ve written here, I don’t have a favourite, but I think the one that means the most to me is ‘The Man who Sold me a Pear’, which appeared on these pages in year one. I guess I peaked early.

I’m not going to ask you to post in the comments what your favourite entry has been (this isn’t YouTube) but I imagine that – if I’ve been doing this properly – it will have been different for each person. I’m the one sitting here tapping the keys, but ultimately I have always hoped that this was just another means of building the Kingdom of God. If it has been then I’m sure that the Holy Spirit will have His own selection of favourite posts. Hopefully, the list of posts that He didn’t like is a short one.

So, one final time, thank you for being a part of this. May God continue to bless you all.

James’s Blog: Winding Down.

James’s Blog: Winding Down.

The end of October will be this blog’s fifth year anniversary. That means I’ve been posting something more or less weekly for five years now, and I’m feeling it. That’s around 260 posts, whether I had something to say or not, whether I wanted to post something or not. I’m not delusional enough to think that I have a limitless supply of wisdom to distribute over the internet – I’m surprised I’ve lasted this long, to be honest.

But I have made a decision. The Law of Diminishing Returns is a real thing and five years is long enough. This means that I’m going to take a break once we reach the end of October. I don’t know for certain what this break will look like – whether I’m hanging up my blogging pen for good, or if I’ll be back after a break, or if I’ll just hang around indefinitely, posting something every now and then. I’m not sure. It’ll also depend on what works for Lioness Publishing and Elsa – after all, it’s her site.

I didn’t know what was going to come of all this when we started it. We’d just published The Listening Book and this blog was supposed to be its companion. Like most authors, I nursed a secret hope that this might be the beginning of something huge, but I’m far from disappointed with where we’ve ended up. God has been very gracious to me, mostly through Elsa and Mark and all of you who have taken the time to read what I’ve typed up every week. Thank you.

So I hope you enjoy the blog posts that follow over the next month, and will join with me in giving thanks to the God who created everything and gave us the gift of being able to create our own little worlds.

James’s Blog: Ten Years Ago…

James’s Blog:  Ten Years Ago…
Ruth reminded me that this is not just any old New Year. This is the end of the 2010s and we’re about to embark on the roaring 20s. I actually found this encouraging. Read more

James’s Blog: The Inconvenience of Forgiveness.

James’s Blog:  The Inconvenience of Forgiveness.

I’ve just written a blog post.

But not this blog post.

I was reflecting on something that had happened to me years ago, and I thought the experience would make a good post. It was an interesting situation, personal and significant, with a strong applicable lesson at the end. In short, it was perfect blog material. Read more

James’s Blog: Choking on the Hand that Feeds Me.

James’s Blog:  Choking on the Hand that Feeds Me.

Remember being at school, when popularity was such a big part of life? That was the top of the food chain back then – being popular; being one of the ‘cool kids’. Then we left school and marched off into adult life, but it seems that the playground followed us. Read more

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