Why?

As you may have noticed, I am starting a blog.  This is not a new year's resolution; it has been a year or two in the making.  Since it is not a new year's resolution I figure it has a chance of lasting longer than a month.  At first I plan to post once a week, probably on Mondays or Tuesdays.  I am so excited about it that I considered calling it A Blog Agog.

I have been asked whether I think blogging is a waste of time.  I have considered that question seriously.  Writing and reading blogs surely can be a waste of time, but in spite of that possibility I have decided to fly my sign for a few reasons.

1. Blogs are a way to enter into a larger conversation.  I love to read because I think it is massively important to be incited and challenged by the thinking of people that are varyingly like me and not like me.  I enjoy going where the gadflies bite.  After enough bites a guy begins to slowly and groggily wake up.  After several cups of coffee he may even want to say a few things himself.  This will be my attempt to do that.  It will only work if others read and talk back, so I hope to incite you to engage.

2. I have a litter of ideas that keep asking to be let out.  My regular studies often give life to lots of young ideas that grow through conversation to the age that they start noticing there is a whole wide world to explore.  They continue to multiply and want to go outside and play.  This blog is me opening the door, hoping they won't go out and taunt the neighbor's dog.

3.  I want to take every opportunity I have to lift up the light of truth.  Hence the blog title.  The title comes from a newsletter I started and edited in college, which had a short and fruitful life.  The image comes primarily from the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  The lamppost there marks the entrance into another realm, and the way back home.  I am not the light, but I consider it my life to bear witness to the Light.  If this blog can lift up a glimmer of the Light of truth in Christ for others to see, if it can signal the presence of another world, if it can help point the way home, it will be only by the pure grace of God.

I hope to see you in the comments section.

Tom