I have had the privilege of preaching in a service of the Seven Last Words of Christ for Good Friday services eight times now. The first seven years I was able to get a new "word" each time. That means that every time I preach in such a service going forward I have a sermon that I can use if I so choose.

I was thinking that that is exactly what I would do this year because my calendar has been so full. But when I pulled up the sermon for the text that I would be preaching on, I noticed that this was one of the very first sermons I had given. I was still in seminary. And my sermon shows it.

Over the years I have moved towards a much more conversational way of speaking. This first sermon was not so much that. It made attempts at being that, but it still had rather long paragraphs filled with too many details pulling them down.

So out came my editing pen. I re-wrote the beginning. Slashed a whole bunch of the body. Re-worked the ending. And ended up with a sermon that keeps the same message of my first one but sound more like me today. I enjoyed the process and it helped the sermon feel fresh for me.

And status updates are killing my blog. That and the amazingly large amount of work that I have had heaped upon me (and have heaped upon myself). So I'm just going to own the fact that I will not be blogging much, if at all, for an unspecified amount of time.

I began this blog back when I first started thinking about going to seminary. It was a way for me to hone my skills at noticing things that interest me and then telling a compelling (and brief) story about those things to the world. My hope was that it would help me as I developed as a preacher/public speaker.

Success! Job well done, blog. I will always be able to improve, but I have reached a level of comfort that makes my blog not as necessary for these purposes any more.