How would you like to spend about a year together?
I do not know your answer to that question, well unless you comment here or on the tweet or Facebook post that will inevitably follow the completion of this particular blog post, how else would you find yourself here to read that question in the first place? Anyway, before I lose the plot too badly, let's go back to that year thing...
I've been on a mini-sabbatical from this blog, partly because, once again I found myself stepping away from the physical pulpit and wondered if this blog should be retitled or deleted or what. But, I still have a little card in my pocket that I pay $40 a year for that says I am still a pastor, plus as my wife would tell me and others I seem to pastor people all the time, whether I want to or not, so the name is staying.
Another reason for my mini-sabbatical is because if this blog does exist I wasn't sure what it's purpose should be, just randomness, I've done that before, some main thrust, I've done that too, or something else entirely. I gave up on the something else entirely because that would have required way too much thought and creativity, which led me to randomness or particularity. Randomness can work, as I said I've done it before, but even in the times when this blog has been random it has had a certain order to it, even if that order existed only in my mind. But, life is still a little more random than it used to be and I began to think that I would like a "something" to focus on. To that extent I landed squarely on doing some main thing on this blog. That was about a month ago.
So why the wait? I couldn't figure out what that main thing should be. I have been schooled in the church and church related things, so that was an obvious angle, but knowing that may have limited me from a universe of possibilities but it still left me with at least a galaxy of possibilities, if not several galaxies worth. Next I narrowed it down to the Bible, but again I was left with 66 possibilities. That was three weeks ago, right around the time I turned 40.
Then two weeks ago as I sat in church listening to a sermon on Acts it was brought to my attention by my Pastor, who happens to be my wife, that the guy who wrote Acts wrote the gospel of Luke. Now, I already knew this, I was taught it in church and in college and in seminary, but I realized it in the larger scope of my life. You see when I first became a pastor in Linton, the kind that preached every week, I set my anchor in the gospel of Mark, preaching through it chapter by chapter. Then when I found myself a pastor yet again, this time in Elwood, I set my anchor in the gospel of Matthew [my favorite gospel, fyi] preaching through it chapter by chapter, and in some cases verse by verse, sentence by sentence, or even word by word. And here I find myself at another beginning in my life as a pastor and it all makes perfect sense to set my anchor in the gospel of Luke. As I said, that was two weeks ago.
Which catches us up, well almost. I still had to think of whether or not I should begin and end in Luke, and after much thought I decided that I would not. I would begin in Luke chapter 1 but I will end in Acts chapter 28. So if you add together Luke's 24 chapters and Acts 28 chapters you come up with 52, which incidentally is the amount of weeks in a year...so why did I say "about a year"?
That answer is the easiest one of all, my goal is to post weekly, but it won't always happen, there will be hard weeks and birthdays and anniversaries and holidays and vacations and sickness and untold other things that will happen in my life and the lives that surround mine so I may not hit that weekly goal, but I promise that if you keep showing up I will too, until it's done.
One last question and answer and you can get back to your evening, or morning, or afternoon or night. Why this particular title, Road Trippin' with the Doctor? First off, I like it. Secondly these two books are a journey from before the first breath of Jesus's life to the first breath of the church and beyond. We will encounter stories both well known and hardly known. We will follow followers that don't follow very well. People will fall down dead and others who are dead will live again. There will be the miraculous and the mundane. There will be the holy and the ungodly. That all together sounds like one hell of a good time to me, that sounds like a journey I want to go on, so I am, I'm going with Luke, who happens to be a Doctor, so obviously I am Road Trippin' with the Doctor...come along if you would like, there is always room on the journey for a few friends, a few acquaintances, a few strangers and even the occasional outsider and enemy who hopefully won't be by the journey's end.
See you next week for the beginning.
Peace and Love,
Pastor K
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