Jan 1, Eagles 30

January 2nd, 2006

Another year has ended and a new one has begun.

Despite the fact that it’s happened to me more than thirty-five times now it’s still a somewhat singular experience. Sure, it’s an arbitrary distinction based on a man-made calendar that has no real bearing on the operation of the solar system or even the earth. It’s just a point in time made special by some astronomer of old saying “Eh, put the mark… there” (OK, perhaps I make blatantly obvious the fact that I didn’t research the above statement, but you get my point).

Jan 1, 2006 is just another day, but most of us in the western world will, by tradition, look upon it as a new start. Our planet’s elliptical race around the sun crosses the start/finish line once again and as we pass the marshaller’s stand many will stop to take a moment to look back and forwards and consider where we are going.

2005 was a pretty good year. Isaiah has done well in school. Gideon has been transformed from an infant to quite a delightful little fellow with his own, very definite personality and Ruth and I have experienced one more year of being a-hitched.

I have, however, done a fairly lousy job of maintaining this particular aspect of the r-l-w.net web empire. So many thoughts have slipped through the cracks– so many events have gone unrecorded. It’s kind of a shame, but all I can do (as I have opined so many times in the past) is to try to do better in the future.

Back in the days when the area of this website where I wrote this kind of thing was called RLW::UHF, I wrote something every day. Unfortunately, I think 2005 was the year I lost a bunch of those in a backup mistake when I changed servers at my webhost. Regardless of that, though, I am going to return to daily writing (as I have declared so many times in the past). We’ll give it another try.

2005 was the year I began preaching semi-regularly at small congregation in the country. In fact, I preached there this morning– which I found a good and fitting way to start the year. The church meets in Hardin, IL which is about 45-50 minutes away from our home in Alton. It’s a very scenic drive up the Great River Road along the Mississippi. Eagles like to spend the winter on the bluffs along the river and we must have seen thirty or more of them on the way home. You can read a version of this morning’s sermon at Return to Fundamentals which is a page on another website I am resolving to update regularly this year– at least weekly.

Among many other resolutions and determinations which I may or may not elaborate here, I want to do a better job of recording my life and the growth and events of my young son’s lives here.

[Well, it’s kind of uneven, and not very polished, but here it is. I am out of practice after all. But I won’t be for long…]