Cutting edge content - every day - fresh out of the oven!

This "post five times a week" exercise is an interesting phenomenon. It helps keep my writing "edge" fairly sharp, and I like the way I have to "scramble in the pocket" sometimes, forced to improvise because my self-imposed deadline is pretty-much 10:00 at the latest - and then move on to actual paid work!

I'm enjoying my recent penchant for responding to current news topics - just so long as it all fits within the general theme of "A Life Examined." Back when I wrote a weekly Op-Ed for the Tampa Tribune I always wished I had the opportunity to publish three-four columns a week, so my writing could be more cogent. This blog is my opportunity to do just that (I just wish some guy in a van would still throw my work on 300,000 driveways).

Once again - and this has happened quite often in the past two weeks - I am astounded at the positive response yesterday's post generated. Here's the link if you missed it "When is a preacher a nincompoop?" One friend who edits a Texas weekly said she would have run it as commentary... but now they're working on the Sept 17 issue and it will - hopefully - be a moot issue by then. Again, the idea of timeliness and the value of posting fresh content every day.

This is why I always begin every morning with scripture. "But wait!" you may exclaim... "The latest thing "posted" in the Bible was written almost two-thousand years ago. How can you still say that's cutting edge?"

Good question, my friend. Fact is, the texts of the Old and the New Testaments still speak to me with relevance, freshness, wisdom, insight, authority - and so much more. It's a fact that boggles my mind on a daily basis. Scripture speaks with a sense of timelessness that reveals something about the transcendent character of God's nature. When Jesus said, for instance, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled..." he was speaking directly into my experience this morning. No gap, no distance, no separation....

Truth, the evidence suggests, has a quality that resists weathering. Truth stands apart from the vicissitudes of culture and fashion and the political wind... Truth even stands apart from the more temporal structures of religion. This is why it is so critically important that we remember to worship God, to follow Jesus, rather than become infatuated with what the Apostle Paul dismissed as "The winds of doctrine..."

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching (doctrine) and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Ephesians 4)

Growing up into Christ!

If this daily "column" inspires, encourages or facilitates such a pathway in anyone at all, then that's better than great. Primarily, though, this discipline is a huge part of my personal journey, and my readers simply get to listen in....

Peace - DEREK