The (not so) empty shelf

This is a picture of a shelf in my office.  It's contents include books I own that 1) either I've never read, or 2) have only ever read parts of them.  Either way, they are books that I have for a long time intended to spend more time with.

A few weeks ago I came across a blog post entitled "The Empty Shelf Challenge."  But rather than getting new books to fill up an empty shelf, I figured I already own an empty-shelf's worth of books that I want to read.  So, my goal isn't to buy any more books but to simply dive into ones that I already have.  And (if I can hold my self accountable to this) my secondary goal is to not buy any new books until I've worked my way through the ones on this shelf.  This will hopefully provide motivation to keep working at it so I can once again buy new books :)

The purpose of this blog, for the foreseeable future, will simply be a space to record thoughts and summaries as I go through each book.  I intend to write an overview for each book and a recap for each chapter or section as a means to stay disciplined and focused as I do this.  I'm interested to see how far I actually make it.

Bearing with the Weak: A Virtual Metaphor

It's almost been a month since my last posting. This does not come as a surprise to me (see my very first post on this blog). Yet again it seems as if I've created and am now neglecting another blog. I hadn't even thought about this, but then I got a gmail chat from friend Ben. It went something like this....

11:30 AM Ben: you need some new blog material

don't let this one die!

11:33 AM me: haha - yeah, my bad

I've been busy

this is what always happens

As a result, blogging is on my mind again, and I'm aware that I need to write something, anything, just to keep this blog going. Not because it's a profound blog, but because it's not a good practice to leave things unfinished and abandoned.

It was a simple gesture by Ben, but it got me thinking of how bloging delinquency can serve as a metaphor for our faith journeys. It's easy to grow lax and complicit - It's easy to get distracted and lose sight of what we set out to do. Sometimes we need our brother or sister to give us a gentle nudge or a swift kick in the pants. And sometimes we need the strong (i.e. Ben and his bloging briliance) to bear with the weak (we all know who that is).